


bring back what once was mine

by vampirerising



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bill is Pascal don't fight me on this, Canon-Typical Violence, Eddie is Rapunzel, Fairy Tale Elements, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Inspired by Tangled (2010), Magic, Mentioned Maturin | The Turtle, Multi, Pennywise (IT) Exists, Richie is Flynn Rider, Sonia Kaspbrak's A+ Parenting, Teenage Losers Club (IT), That makes Stan the horse, The Kissing Bridge (IT)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-02-19 05:40:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 193,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22139353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vampirerising/pseuds/vampirerising
Summary: “Uh,” a voice demands, out loud and not in his head, a figure in the doorway. “Who thefuck—”Richie’s mouth runs before he can form a coherent thought. “I’m sorry,” he blurts. “I didn’t mean to just, like,enteryour house, but I was just… I was—”His words stop, hard and sudden, as the tone of voice becomes familiar to his ears. He knows who this is.Fuck.He could nevernotknow who this is.He’s so,soswept up in Eddie’s face he misses the baseball bat that comes flying at his head.--In 1989, Eddie Kaspbrak breaks his arm and disappears.In the years leading up to 1993, Richie Tozier makes a wish, but the magical Kissing Bridge is not the only one who hears him. With help from a Turtle in the stream and a Darkness in the sewers, Eddie and Richie are reunited, but that doesn't mean it's going to be easy—for what is Wished must always come to pass.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 124
Kudos: 279
Collections: The Loser’s Club <3





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> It's 2020, I am back on my bullshit, and I am not over this clown movie, clearly.
> 
> Here is the setting: I have taken anxiety medication on my flight to London because planes make me nervous, but I have taken too much so I'm actually just high as shit. My main goal those eight hours was to write a Stanlon NYE fic I could post as soon as I settled into my AirBnb, but... if it isn't obvious, I did not do that. 
> 
> Instead, I wrote this. It is a Tangled-inspired Reddie fic, which I have planned to not be as long as the last "short" thing I wrote, so fingers crossed for that one. 
> 
> I blatantly took from the movie, though, so I do not own anything; that's all Disney. If you do not know it already, the song used below and the title are from [Healing Incantation](https://open.spotify.com/track/75VVIB2x1h6BfxD2PqOO57?si=qUEbc8YnTgmfRYRpjs7DAA), off the _Tangled_ soundtrack.

**• 1989 •**

( _about Eddie_ )

1

Eddie screams, and falls straight through the ceiling from the second floor to the first. There is a leper, and then there is a clown, larger than life, painted with red (ruby) (scarlet) (vermillion) ( _bloody_ ) lips, and teeth as sharp as needles (knives). They barely graze his skin, but the pinprick of their ends, sharpened for destruction, are close enough to give off the illusion of his face being ripped from his bone. He feels the sting, knows what it would be like for those things ( _weapons_ ) to latch on and destroy ( _eat_ ).

He thinks, belatedly, that Richie will come through that door behind him, the clown. He hears him, hears that nickname he pretends to hate ( _please call me it, I like it when you call me it, it’s a secret identity just for me and you_ ). Hears his foot against the wood, Richie’s foot, and _EDS!_ He hears it over and over— _EDS EDS EDS EDS_ —

The way his voice catches when he shrieks his full name, when he says _EDDIE_ , ear-splitting and terrified and furious—that’s when the clown measures his whole face, has its mouth hovering over Eddie’s skull, ready to consume.

He wishes Richie were here, wishes he were the last person he saw before he died, because Richie will make a joke and at least he’ll die laughing, and what’s better than that?

And he does show up, Richie, with Bill, and the hot breath is off his face, the hand no longer wrapped around his neck, and he is _free_.

Technically, Richie does not save him. Beverly does, a spike through the clown’s eye, but Eddie can’t stop looking at Richie, face pale, glasses amplifying the wild, frantic gleam of his gaze, searching, looking, finding—

Days ago, the leper asked, _What are you looking for, Eddie?_

Now, Eddie’s mind answers, _I think it’s you._

Gray, cracked skin. Long, trembling fingers. Face melting off the bone, yellow pus at the eyes. Decay where there used to be life. _Me?_

 _No_ , Eddie’s mind supplies. He drinks Richie in, towering over him, still crouched on the floor. Pale, flushed skin. Long, trembling fingers. Face soft, rounded at the cheeks. Eyes familiar. 

“DON’T YOU FUCKING TOUCH ME!” he yells and his mind is screaming _touch me, please, touch me, only you. Don’t let the others near me._

Richie snaps his arm back into place (breaks it somewhere else).

 _You,_ Eddie thinks, looking at him, holding his gaze. He can see his own reflected in those glasses, fearful and injured and trusting, just a little. _Always you._

2

Eddie breaks his arm in one two three _four_ places.

He has never felt pain like this. Has never felt pain at all before, always so careful and meticulous. He’s only ever thought of it in a detached sort of way. Has only seen it in front of him, in Ben’s cut up stomach, in scrapes on shins and elbows from Bill or Richie or Stan falling from their bikes. He was never allowed to do anything that could ever _hurt_ him lest he end up in the emergency room with his mother clinging to his side, worried and crying and convinced he’s got weak bones and the early signs of arthritis. He drinks full glasses of milk at dinner. He says _no_ before he can consider saying _yes._

If this is what pain feels like, if this is it what it is, he thinks it’s kind of cool. Thinks he’s done something that’s worth it, thinks he gets it when Bill and Richie show off the scabs they’ve gotten from attempting cool tricks on bikes and skateboards and from dares. He wonders why he always second-triple-quadruple thinks it all.

He ends up in the emergency room anyway. It is bright and sterile and white and _clean._ It is such a jarring contrast from the house on Neibolt that he bursts into tears, ugly and loud and causing a scene. His mother is frantic over him, smoothing his hair and clutching his cheeks and cursing _those godawful friends of his._

She thinks he has a concussion. She makes the doctors check his eyes four times with a tiny penlight, and then he takes test after test so his head’s not ignored, if he does have an injury there.

He doesn’t.

Eddie has a nasty bruise from his shoulder to his elbow and he can’t hold his arm up correctly. Richie fucked it up even worse by touching it, he thinks his doctor says, though he says it in more medicinal terms. Doctors don’t say _fucked it up._ It is clear it’s been messed with; someone has dislocated it, and Eddie did scream when it happened, but the touch was comforting when he was petrified so how could he use such an awful word to describe it?

_Dislocated._

Richie has never touched him in a way that made him hurt. He’s only ever put his hands on him tentatively, reverently, even as he punches him in the shoulder or kicks his shin or trips him on the sidewalk.

He catches him before he falls when he does that last one, so Eddie doesn’t scrape his knees. If he does, Richie patches him up—big, square bandaid and antiseptic, fingers gentle and soft. If Eddie is lucky and no one is looking, Richie will kiss the bandage, the bruise, whatever it is. Eddie wonders if Richie’ll come see him and kiss this one. The bruise is very big.

It is like Richie is taking care of something precious when he is with Eddie, but not like his mother does it. It is like Eddie is a thing that can handle a lot of shit but he needs to be careful anyway because that thing could break and not in the way most people think. Not like how glass shatters, loud and in pieces. He takes care of him like he is worried one wrong move means the end of something that has no real name, like there is something more to it than what it is, something at the end that is hard to explain. It would be worse than cleaning up a mess. For most messes, you can use a cloth, or a mop, or a broom, or even your hands. Most messes can be swept under the rug. This can’t, whatever it is. Eddie and Richie can’t be swept anywhere ( _but into each other_ ).

Eddie gets put in a heavy, itchy white plaster cast and his mother pesters the doctors for a prescription that is both unnecessary and too strong for him. She makes him take two every six hours even though the instructions on the bottle say otherwise, and he spends the end of June incapacitated and drowsy. _Eddie-bear, you don’t want to be in pain, do you? Oh, I hate it when you’re in pain, and those doctors never know what they’re doing, and it’s too far to go to Bangor when in you’re hurt like this. They would’ve done more tests and known exactly what’s wrong and what to do, but don’t worry, Mommy is here, and this is good for you, it’ll help. I know it will help. Trust Mommy._

He doesn’t want to because he thinks it is too much, but if he doesn’t do what she says, doesn’t take two pills with water in front of her and show her his empty tongue, she’ll just crush them up into his food. So.

He likes it, though, the weightlessness of it all. He worries little, can forget why he’s in this cast in the first place. He thinks maybe he fell out of a tree, or tripped in the Barrens, where he’s not supposed to go but does anyway, because that’s where—

He is loose-limbed and free, like this. He particularly enjoys how he feels in the haze between consciousnesses, when the medicine finally kicks in, when he can think about what it might be like to run his hands through dark, curly hair for hours on end.

3

Eddie does not see the light of day for the rest of the summer.

(For the next year.

For the next two three _four_ years.

But he does not know those things yet.)

He is weak, and fragile, and his arm healed funny, so he needs to get it reset again. His mother keeps him locked up because she is afraid of his delicate tendencies.

It is fine for a while because he is scared and he does not know why he is scared. He is scared of shadows and staircases and the creaking of his floorboards. He huddles under his covers and keeps on the nightlight he was certain he threw out when he was ten and plays a mixtape he does not know why or how he has. He rewinds it over and over, listens to it in the daylight and in the dead of night: calming songs, familiar songs, songs that make him remember things he can’t possibly, songs that make his heart swell and hurt and ache and want.

4

Eddie’s friends do not contact him.

He is in too much of a haze the first few times they do to realize they’ve attempted it, and his mother, who hates them, does not tell him he’s had visitors. She turns them away, each of them. He misses Bill’s insistent phone calls, and the two times Bev braved the rude shouting, and the polite, stammering of Ben who wanted to drop off some books he thought Eddie might like. Mike does not even make it halfway down the path before Mrs. K calls him a name that’d make Eddie shrivel up and _die_ , and Stan knocks in that perfect, pristine manner of his—and completely goes off the _rails_ when he is not allowed inside.

Stanley Uris, proper and put together, collared shirts and no creases, calls Sonia Kaspbrak a _manipulative, selfish bitch_ and she threatens to call the cops. He stands there and dares her to, and she clutches the phone like a lifeline, cord wrapped around her wrist. _You are just like that Tozier boy_ , she tells him. _Insufferable and a nuisance. A bad influence._

Stan says, and Eddie hears it, but he thinks it is a dream when it comes to him, _Thanks, but you’re wrong, Mrs. K._ And the way he says that is how Richie does when she’s being particularly bitchy. _I am nothing like that Tozier boy, and you should be glad of that. It would be much worse if he were me right now._

 _Get off my property, you stupid Jewboy,_ his mother snarls.

Stan merely smiles and leaves. He moves to the top of the list of people Sonia Kaspbrak does not want near her Eddie-bear.

But Eddie misses all of that and more, a lump on his bed, loopy and tired, in and out of consciousness. He thinks he imagines Richie at one point, sliding open his window and climbing into his room, settling into the bed next to him. He has warm limbs and a soft shirt and his hair is just as Eddie thought it’d be when he was dizzy and confused and sad and lonely. Easy to touch, nice against his fingers. Richie makes this sound in the back of his throat Eddie especially likes and presses his nose to Eddie’s neck, he thinks.

Eddie has not felt so comforted in weeks. He clutches.

Richie is not there when he wakes, though, so maybe it was a dream. A very realistic dream that’s left impressions on his bed, his pillow, his person. The pillowcase smells like Richie, musty and minty and smoky with a hint of citrus. Eddie shoves his face into it and refuses to let his mother wash it, even after it fades.

5

Eddie forgets, like they all do.

Eventually. 

It is like he is memory wiped, like people in those science-fiction books and movies he likes. The longer he spends at home, the easier it is for the fear to churn and build in his belly. His arm aches in every place the bone has snapped. It has not healed right. He needs a lot of physical therapy because of the way he landed on his shoulder. He has not been comfortable in days, in weeks, in months.

His mother brings him food and medicine. She comforts him when he screams out in the middle of the night. He does not ask about the friends he doesn’t seem to remember, and she will not provide information that he even had any. He does not know about the summer he started to get his shit together, does not know what could’ve happened to him then, had he not succumbed to this. Had he not given in.

He is inexplicably afraid of clowns, and he doesn’t like heights, and he doesn’t like getting dirty. He is afraid to get sick.

Eddie takes his medications like he’s supposed to. He also takes them not like he’s supposed to, more than he has to, if only because he likes the things they make him think. Dark hair. A warm body. The way he could roll into a chest and feel safe there when he’s never felt safe anywhere in his life.

He takes them a lot. He takes them when he needs them, when he doesn’t, when he’s bored, when he’s tired and wants to go to bed. He likes how they make him feel. How he doesn’t feel so— _alone._

And he is alone. He is so alone.

He is lonely. _So_ lonely, but he doesn’t know why. He has always been like this.

Sometimes he has these memories of golden summer days and flashes of smiles and infectious laughter and the strain of calf muscles after riding bikes too long. He remembers the feel of a heart, how it can pound hard and out of control when it sees something it likes. But he has never seen something he likes, just the dark, dull house and the inside of his room and the kitchen and the living room. Sometimes his porch, if he’s lucky, but he isn’t very often.

They must be someone else’s memories. Is that possible, for him to have them?

Whatever it is, it feels like they had a good life. A good time. He’s glad for them.

* * *

( _about Richie_ )

1

The thing about having crushes on boys is that he can ignore them, probably, if he tries hard enough. Richie looks at Bev with her long and then short red hair, and he looked at Betty Ripsom, blonde with an easy smile before she went missing ( _before she screamed at him, hanging in a closet without her bottom half_ ), and he looks at the girl in the ice cream shop who gives him extra Rocky Road and doesn’t charge him for it.

He does not look at Henry Bowers’ cousin with his sharp jawline and callused fingers.

Richie stops going to the arcade halfway through the summer, but that’s only because he’s gotten so good at Street Fighter it’s pointless and the rest of the games are shit.

In the bathroom of the Aladdin, someone has written _Richie Tozier sucks flamer cock!_ on the wall between the sinks. It is not the first time he’s seen it, nor will it be the last. It is in other places, too, and some of those places he will never see. He looks at it now, wets a paper towel, and scrubs.

The words do not come off.

In a moment of bravery ( _stupidity_ ), Richie elects to leave them there. Who the fuck cares. This town is fucked anyway.

He will never find out that the graffiti was taken down three days later, Ben and Mike spending fifteen minutes and an entire bottle of rubbing alcohol to wipe it clean.

2

The thing about having a crush on his best friend is that he cannot ignore it if he tries hard enough. He is always looking. There is so much to look at that he does not see when he looks at girls, even if they are pretty.

The girls, he means. Because they are. Pretty.

_But._

Have you seen Eddie’s hair? His face? His eyes? His eye _lashes?_

Surely you’ve looked close enough to make out the freckles, and the green in his irises. You’ve seen the face he makes when he’s confused, yes? The one he makes when he is thinking? How about when he’s happy? That thing his cheeks do and the way his smile brightens everything, even if you’re in the worst mood ever? You can’t be in a bad mood when Eds is around. It’s not possible. Have you heard him _laugh?_

Oh.

You haven’t noticed those things?

Yeah, Richie hasn’t either.

( _Eddie is prettier than every girl in Derry._ )

3

Richie is afraid of dying. Of being forgotten. Of clowns, in general. Of choosing. Of making the wrong choice.

( _He can’t pick the right door fast enough. Can’t find it. Can’t stick to his guns and choose._ )

But he is not as afraid of any of those things as he is of _Eddie_ dying, of _Eddie_ forgetting him, of _Eddie_ looking at him the way everyone else did at the arcade. He is afraid of Mrs. K being right for once and Eddie getting one of those diseases she has him talking about every time he’s anxious.

The clown figures them all out in seconds, but Richie cannot tell them what he sees. Cannot talk about the arcade, or Bowers, or the statue. Can’t talk about Eddie’s face emerging from the rip in the mattress, puking up dark liquid. Tar, maybe.

Whatever it is, it is Death, and Eddie is covered in it and Richie can’t handle it, the thought that he might always be too late to save him.

So Richie says, _Can only virgins see this stuff? Is that why I’m not seeing this shit?_

4

Richie’s nightmares run on a loop. Clown, clown, clown. Eating Eddie’s face. Richie, too late. Eddie, nothing but bones. A carcass. Forgotten, forgotten. Left alone. Dead. Widowed, it feels like in his dreams, like he was something and now he’s not. Like a phantom limb. He remembers what it feels like, but it is not there. He is not there.

Mrs. K tells them Eddie is done with them. The way she says _done_ implies more than one day. The way she calls Bev _dirty_ implies she thinks they all are. She looks at Richie like he’s the one who broke Eddie’s arm, and maybe he did. Maybe it’s his fault because he turned left when he should have gone right. Followed Bill when he’s normally always at Eddie’s side.

( _Richie hates Bill sometimes._ )

The door to Eddie’s house gets slammed in his face. Once, twice, three times. Four. Five. Six.

After a week, she stops bothering to see who it is.

Eddie does not answer his walkie talkie. Does not make it easy for him. Mrs. K watches out of every window, keeps her eye on him until he is out of view. She is always the one picking up the phone.

They come true, he guesses: Nightmares and fears are just warnings in the end. A way to brace yourself for what you always knew was coming.

Mrs. K has always been like this, has always hated him. Eddie has not. He is mad at Richie for not getting there fast enough. For not choosing him first. For hesitating. For leaving him. For everything Richie can imagine and more.

So he chooses to ignore him, to abandon him back, and Richie is forgotten.

He blasts _Africa_ by Toto and cries.

5

The thing about having a crush on his best friend is that it’s not a crush at all.

Richie finds that out in a decrepit house, locked away in rooms he cannot escape until he allows himself to be honest. He finds it out in the radio silence that follows, staring at walkie talkies and waiting for the squeaking sound of brakes as Eddie comes to a stop in front of his house.

He gets nothing but Stan, who takes the long way now because he does not like to be alone. His bike does not make the same sounds as Eddie’s and Richie misses that, misses knowing he was there before he knocked. He goes with Stan anyway—to Bill’s, or the quarry, or the Barrens, or the clubhouse.

Eddie is never there and it is so very obvious he is missing. Richie spends every agonizing, lonely moment in love with him, occupying these spaces on his own, which is weird when he’s never had to before. 

The hammock feels empty without him and his socks in his face. Too big. Uncomfortable. Richie doesn’t sit in it.

It remains empty, like they all knew, despite the arguments back and forth, that the thing solely belonged to _RichieandEddie_. Not Richie. Not Eddie. Both.

* * *

**• in the years that followed •**

( _about_ _Derry_ )

1

Pennywise does not get stopped.

Its reign of terror begins in the fall of 1988 with the death of Georgie Denbrough and ends with a massive production accident during the Fourth of July carnival in the Square. The Ferris wheel operates with loose screws, and the other rides are not exactly up to code. They’d passed the inspection weeks prior, as they were being built, but day of, they just—

Failed.

( _Almost as if it were a sabotage._ )

Fifty die immediately as a clown no one remembers hiring watches, doing odd dances and handing out balloons and making toddlers cry.

Those that did not die from the initial accident, those that were merely injured with high hopes of recovery, end up ripped apart, bleeding out slowly. The death count rises, and limbs are found covered in teeth marks, shredded and gnawed at the bone. The residents of Derry call it an animal attack, compare these marks to bodies found earlier in the year, and connect the dots. When a wildcat closes in on the town border either intentional or not, no one is merciless in its death. They kill it, the lynx or the cougar or the bobcat. All stories differ on what kind of animal it was—some call it a black bear, one even goes as far as to blame a moose—but they think the worst is over.

They do not know they allowed the perpetrator into their festivity. They do not know it was the clown and it will always be the clown. Only seven ( _six, since one is already forgetting, has already forgotten_ ) know the truth: The clown is hungry, the clown feeds off fear, and hatred, and sickness.

The clown ( _It_ ) goes to bed sated that summer night, as July enters its hottest week, much earlier than expected.

It will be back.

As always, there is work to do, and It did not get to eat what It wanted this time around.

2

Ben, Bill, Bev, Stan, and Richie start the ninth grade at Derry High School.

Mike Hanlon continues to work at his grandpa’s farm but is allowed to enroll at the same school in October of 1989.

Eddie Kaspbrak gets homeschooled.

3

The town begins to forget the year’s terrors, as it always does. The Losers do, too, and the magic is so powerful they find themselves forgetting _each other_ if they aren’t in close proximity.

4

Stan suggests it, making a pact. They are losing bits and pieces of a summer that changed them, that scared them into the people they are today. Into the people they’re growing into. _We are not allowed to forget,_ he says to them, _because that clown is not gone, and Georgie is dead, and so are Betty Ripsom and Eddie Corcoran and almost sixty others._

He finds a Coke bottle in the mess that is the Barrens and smashes it on the ground until it is nothing but shards. He picks the largest, sharpest piece and grins at them, making a slashing motion at Richie, who jumps back, like he thinks Stan’s really about to stab him.

No one considers the health risks of this, or the bacteria that’s no doubt lingering in their favorite hangout. Eddie is not there to warn them off about such a thing, about mixing blood and the AIDs epidemic back in New York and how disgusting it is to share bodily fluids, even in the name of _this._ And honestly, they do not know why he would really say such a thing anyway—they can’t even put a face to the name, most of them.

Richie can, though. He sees Eddie as he was, imagines him as he is. He says to them, shy and looking away, _Cut both of mine. For me and Eds._

It’s Stan’s idea, but Bill’s their leader, and he does the deed. Both of Richie’s palms sting like a motherfucker, cuts running from pinkie to thumb. Warm, thin streams of blood drop down the length of his fingers and onto the grass.

A brisk autumn breeze swirls around them, a whirlwind that isolates them from the rest of the world as they grasp hands. Stan takes hold of one of Richie’s hands, and Richie lets the other, the one that is for Eddie, hang there for a moment before Bev takes it, smiling toothily at him.

They are blood siblings standing there, determined to remember, determined to _fight_. Bill says something that he does not stutter through and they agree wholeheartedly because what Bill Denbrough says is law.

They promise, and Derry listens, and miles away, Eddie hisses through his teeth, dropping the steak knife he was cleaning into the sink. He’s sliced open his hand, a jagged, diagonal line that slowly drips blood into the soapy water, staining it pink. He looks at it as the wound bleeds, as it smears, as it spreads from his wrist bone to his inner knuckles, and then closes up as quickly as it appeared.

He prods at it, perplexed, but it is merely a healed scar now, raised against his skin. He hopes his mother doesn’t see.

5

While the Kissing Bridge has been around since the dawn of Derry’s civilization, it did not get its name until the 1930s. Teenagers from feuding families carved their initials into the wood, right in the center, proclaiming their love for all to see. Legend says they admired their work, kissed each other one last time, and jumped into the rushing water below, holding hands. Some real _Romeo and Juliet_ bullshit. If you looked for their carving now, you’d have to really search, and their names are lost to history, which makes it pointless.

So the Kissing Bridge is stupid, really, but Richie finds himself there anyway. He has been forgotten, and he is kind of forgetting ( _what did Eddie’s nose look like again?_ ) and he does not want to lose the way Eddie’s ever made him feel. They say this thing preserves memories, that it holds on to things, that it can—that… _well._

Kids come here when they’re in love because they think the bridge can help them. That it can usher on a crush, or keep the feeling alive, or make the object of their affections theirs forever. That’s why they take the time and effort to carve into wood, which Richie will find out is harder than he originally thought.

_Hope._

That’s what it provides. In a place as dreary and awful as Derry, youths have taken to committing things to this bridge, even more than childhood love. There are carvings for wishes, and dreams, yearnings and desires. All spelled out in the hopes of… hopes of _what,_ exactly?

(That they’ll come true, because we are all romantics at heart. We are dreamers and jokers and gypsies and knights. We are princesses and princes and damsels in distress. We want the glorified happy ending we’ve been promised in books and films. We _want,_ so we carve, and we hope, and we do that because in a world where two people could not be together, the bridge let them live on, not in life but in love, and _maybe_ —)

It’s the _maybe_ that has Richie kneeling in the snow, knees soaked and teeth chattering, earlobes frozen. His father’s pocketknife weighs more than it ought to in his hand. The _hope._ The _maybe._ He doesn’t believe in it, but he does.

He thinks of Eddie as he starts, first the _R_ and then the _E_ , and it is his eyes and his laugh and his smile and the dimples in his cheeks that he’s got on his mind. He pieces him together so easily, so perfectly, it is like he saw him just hours ago, not years. He’s aged him up, broadened his smile and sharpened his jaw, expelled the baby fat in his cheeks; he’s given him the face of a growing boy, but one that does not deviate much from who he’d been. He is cute, cute, cute. Richie slashes a _+_ sign between their initials.

He rocks back on his heels, admires his work, and his hands sting where the scars are. He looks at them, at how they are an angry red instead of the white they’ve been, and misses the way the letters before him shimmer in a faint golden light.

A car rolls down the street. For a brief second, he is worried it is Bowers with his cronies—with Belch, and Criss, and Patrick Hockstetter, and Moose, and Patrick Gordon—and he ought to be nervous he’ll get caught. Ought to have a story for when he’s asked why he’s here and who’s that for? But he’s not, and he doesn’t, because he doesn’t want it to be anyone else. He doesn’t care who knows, or how they know, or if they know.

Stan has it figured out, and Ben knew since the moment they met, and Bev is somehow in his brain at every second of every day. Who cares who knows? He’ll shout it from the rooftops. He’ll make a school-wide announcement. He’ll do whatever it takes to keep the memory of Eddie alive in him as it dies everywhere else, as Bill furrows his brow and tries to recall _the other kid we used to hang out with, what was his name,_ as if Eddie wasn’t his fucking best friend. His Stan, if you will.

(But Bill isn’t handling the forgetting well anyway. Just last week, he went to Bangor for speech therapy and could not recognize Stan when he got back until after they’d had a ten minute conversation and Mike said his fucking name.)

Richie doesn’t want that. Richie cannot _handle_ that. If he forgets, he would like to die, because there is nothing worse than living in a world where he does not know how the sun highlights Eddie’s cheekbones, or how his attention warmed his belly, swirling and tight. Oh, how he loved him. Oh, how he _loves_ him. If he cannot hold on to him, he can hold on to this. To memories.

It is the second ( _nth_ ) time the town of Derry listens to him ( _to a Loser_ ).

* * *

( _about_ _the Kissing_ _Bridge_ )

1

The thing about the Kissing Bridge is that you always get your wish if you believe hard enough. If you _want_ enough.

But the thing about wishes…

Well, there are a lot of _things_ about wishes.

Sometimes you get three. Sometimes you get one. Sometimes there is a genie involved and sometimes you are alone. Sometimes you make them on shooting stars. Sometimes you blow out candles and do not tell a soul.

The lesson here is this: You can make a wish—of course, please make a wish, and wish for something good—but every time you do— _every single time—_ you have to be specific.

Do you know what that means?

The word _specific_ is an adjective that means “clearly defined or identified.” You would be surprised by how many people do not know that, _especially_ when it comes to wishes.

2

Bill Denbrough heads to the Kissing Bridge and he does not immortalize his love for Beverly Marsh. Instead he picks a relatively clean space, drops down, and etches a simple _B._ It’s not too deep, and it’s not too big, but as the curves meet the straight line, he merely thinks, _I am sick of my stutter. I want it gone. I want to be able to speak without any hassle._

Without real reason, he draws a little boat, too, higher up, almost as if on reflex. It is the anniversary of Georgie’s disappearance, and he thinks about him. Thinks about how he misses him, wonders who he’d be now, if given the chance. He wishes he had more time with him. Wishes he were here.

The Kissing Bridge grants wishes fairly quickly.

It is during dinner when his mother is bringing a salad to the table that Bill says _He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts._ He does it again. His mother drops the bowl and it shatters, but no one cares. They listen to Bill, who says it again, and again, and again. He does it three times fast, then five times fast. He does tongue twisters. _She sells seashells by the seashore. He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts. She sells seashells by the seashore. He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts._

A week after, Bill has been cleared from his numerous speech therapy sessions and gets through an entire school presentation without being made fun of once. But that’s not what’s important here. What _is_ occurs at home, when he returns from baseball practice.

Georgie’s light is on in his room, and his laughter is filling the house like it used to, like Bill never thought it would again. Bill has a split second moment of fear where he thinks the clown has come back, has taken over his home, but then there is Georgie, and he is older than when he went missing, but it is Georgie all the same.

Their father apologizes for yelling at Bill all those months, for giving up so easily, so soon, and Bill cries, holding his brother, who has materialized again like he has not been gone for years.

He feels real. Bill does not question it. He does not allow anyone else to do so, either.

3

With the reintroduction of Georgie into their lives, there is no question that the magic is not real. Richie could’ve told them that, having kept his vivid memories of Eddie as everyone else’s faded with time, but he’s kept that to himself.

Still, he goes back to the Kissing Bridge, to _R+E,_ still shining strong in its conviction. It looks different from the others, more present and purposeful. Richie recarves it anyway, freshens it up. He sharpens out the lines and deepens the plus sign between them.

He misses Eddie, who he remembers sharing ice cream with, and biking double with to the Barrens, and occupying spaces only meant for one. He misses the deliberately accidental touches, calculated for maybe hours beforehand, and the tight hugs, and the long grips on wrists. He remembers a time he’d been brave enough to hold his hand. He’d counted to four and then let go. He thinks Eddie may have been brave then, too, because he squeezed his hand a little tighter than usual.

_Eddie._

What he would _give_ to know where he is right now. To see him. To know he is all right and he is just as cute as he’d been (which he is, obviously. It’s _Eddie._ Richie doesn’t need to see him to know that). To go back to a time where the Losers were whole and Richie and Eddie were not separate entities but rather _RichieandEddie_. A package deal. Where one was, the other was not far behind. To have that now, that companionship. To wake up and go from six to seven.

It is hard to be half of a whole when you can’t find the missing pieces of you, when they are lost, even as you try hard to find them. He’d never known that before.

4

The Bridge likes Richie.

Richie is sincere and open. He is honest with himself, if not with the world, and with his intentions. Many who come to this spot mark the wood up with falsehoods, with declarations of love that mean nothing but a means to take off another person’s pants. Richie loves Eddie, and he misses him, and the Bridge can do something about that.

( _After all, it got rid of a stutter and pulled a brother from a sewer._ )

But the Bridge is not the only one who hears Richie’s innermost desires. It is not the only one the Losers have accidentally been speaking to.

There is a turtle a little ways up in the Kenduskeag. He is harmless and likes to swim up and down the stream. He likes to sunbathe on a certain rock, little arms and legs popping out of its shell. The Bridge likes this turtle, could almost consider it a friend. It helps with the wishes within reason, but mostly it just watches.

( _Greta Bowie got hers, even if it made her cry for three months and resulted in some nasty words being written about her on bathroom stalls. It still came true, though, what she longed for. She still got what she wanted, but sometimes you get other things too._ )

There is also a darkness that hears, that tastes Richie’s desperation. Deep down in the bowels of Derry, it is a spider, and a clown, and a large bird, and the Teenage Werewolf. It is the Blob, and the leper, and voices in a drain, and an army of drowned, dead children. It is violence and hatred and fear, all the nastiest parts of humanity, all wrapped into one. It has a true form, but it has never been seen ( _not yet_ ). It does not help with wishes, this darkness, unless they are its own, for it is normally asleep. When it wakes, it consumes the magic of both the Bridge and the turtle. It becomes all-knowing, becomes _It._

It remembers Richie, and It remembers Eddie, and It remembers Bill. It especially remembers Georgie, who was dead in the sewer, but is no longer, snatched cruelly from Its clutches. It remembers all the little Losers that ran with those kids that summer, too, and how It almost had them, but couldn’t get them, not when they were separated. It remembers others, also.

The Bridge can do something about Richie’s wish, and so can the turtle, and so can the darkness. They do not know they are working together. They should not be.

Another Loser wish is granted, and a path is laid out for Richie and Eddie to find each other again, for Eddie to find them _all_ again, but remember the thing about wishes? They have to be _specific._

( _Henry Bowers receives a knife in his mailbox, tied with a red balloon. When he opens it, he will understand what must be done with it. What must be finished._ )

5

There is a plaque on the Kissing Bridge, dirtied and rusted from neglect and time. It used to shine as bright as the summer sun, but now it is dull, sad. Still, if you move a few feet from Richie’s carving, it is there, beneath the very first one, of those teenagers' names who were never meant to be, but did all they could to stay together.

Drop to a squat, squint, and read:

_Carving gleam and glow  
Let your power shine  
Make the clock reverse  
Bring back what once was mine_

_Heal what has been hurt  
Change the fates’ design  
Save what has been lost  
Bring back what once was mine _

* * *

**• 1993 •**

1

Sally Mueller goes missing. Posters of her yearbook photo go up all around town. There haven’t been any of those in years, not since— _no, no one wants to talk about that._

But.

Not since then.

2

An arm is found bloodied and severed in the Barrens. The _Derry News_ reports that the police department cannot determine who it belongs to. It raises speculations. It _reminds_ people, and people hate to be reminded in Derry. There is more than one child missing.

3

A bale of turtles winds up dead in both the Kenduskeag and the Penobscot River, large and small all washed up on shore.

Spiderlings burst from egg sacs all around town, but especially in areas near the sewers. Not all survive, but they still manage to outrank all other insects three to one. The Barrens are a _nightmare_ that year. Stan's shower caps will be a godsend. 

4

Officer Bowers is found dead in his home, a puncture wound to the carotid. The weapon is nowhere to be found.

( _But we know where it is, don’t we?_ )

5

The scars on the Losers’ hands open up like they’ve been cut earlier that day, not four years ago.

Stan notices his first, fingers sticky and sweater sleeve ruined. He calls Bill, who has stained the edges of Georgie’s homework and pretends it is a papercut. He calls Ben, who smeared the blood all over his three-dimensional art project, and he calls Bev, who thought she’d really stuck herself with sewing needles this time. She calls Mike, who has just stepped way from the sheep, wool red but none of them dead, and he calls Richie, who sighs and goes _Yeah, that makes sense._

Several streets over, Eddie’s palm splits open, blood running down his arm to his elbow. He stains the cushions of the couch and his mother screams. He ends up in the emergency room, where the cut cannot be explained, even as Eddie is ushered from his mother and into a therapist’s office ( _have you been having suicidal thoughts, Edward?_ ). His arm is bandaged up again, gauze and tape wrapped around him in a short arm cast so he does not irritate the wound ( _or try to deepen it_ ).

The Derry police reinstate the seven o’clock curfew.


	2. the usual morning lineup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie worries his lip between his teeth. He has a scab there from the last time he did this, biting down hard as he got punched in the face. “It’s November twentieth.”
> 
> “Yeah, that’s what happens,” Stan replies. “Clock strikes twelve, Cinderella loses her slipper, it’s a new day. Funny how that works. Can we talk about the passage of time tomorrow?”
> 
> “It’s Eddie’s birthday today,” Richie says. “He’s seventeen.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some things: 
> 
> 1\. I didn't want this to be as long as ended up being.
> 
> 2\. Eddie was supposed to be here, but I cut him because of the aforementioned length of this chapter. He'll be in the next one.
> 
> 3\. I don't know if you can tell but I love Stan. This is chapter highlights his friendship with Richie, which is precious. We must protect him at all costs.
> 
> 4\. There is mention of drug use and Richie throws up because that's what he does when he’s overwhelmed.

1

As the shower sprays hot and hard against the floor of the tub, Richie comes to a conclusion. He hates his mother’s new shower curtain.

It ripples against the force of the water, emitting a plasticky roar as it gets caught in it. The sound enters through his ears and fills his head slow, like it’s being carefully measured out. He watches its movement with sluggish interest, ignoring the way his socks start to soak at the toe. He really should get up to move the thing, secure it around the tub like it’s supposed to be before he accidentally floods the place and his parents figure out what he’s doing in here, but.

The curtain is ugly.

It has these bright, multicolored geometric shapes all over it, cutting into and through each other. Hideous in its creation, the volume of it is enough to make his eyes bleed, and when he wakes in the middle of the night sometimes, he finds it hard to look at. It blinds him when he flips the light on, and he’s already blind enough as it is.

From this angle—he’s folded into himself on the floor, as small as he can get—one of the shapes looks like it’s eating the other. A yellow square opens up into a pink— _is that a hexagon?_ It’s gotta be a hexagon—and reminds Richie of Pacman. He hates Pacman, always chasing and running and never finding a place to hide, so he hates this curtain. He also hates the way his neck hurts, and the kink in his lower back, but he won’t move from this position.

 _Can’t,_ actually, because won’t implies he has a choice and he’s deliberately deciding against it. He’s lost control of his limbs currently. Doesn’t think he has them.

Well.

He does.

Of course he _does,_ but the marijuana spreads so thickly throughout him that he’s not one hundred percent sure, you know? He sees them, but he can’t move them. He is aware of them, though, and that’s all that matters.

He has a body, though it feels weightless, and attached to that body is his head, which is foggy, and his neck, which he already mentioned. From his neck, he’s got a shoulder, and from there an arm. An elbow comes with his arm, as does a wrist, and on that wrist, he has a watch.

It’s nothing special, this watch—it’s been beaten up a bunch of times. Lost in the dirt, accidentally submerged in water. The strap is loose, and he’s had to make another hole in the leather so it’ll stay on, but it does the job.

It does it now, and he watches the arms move ( _tick, tick, tick_ ). They both point at the twelve, the long one and the short one, and the second hand moves quickly around the face, ready to move on.

Richie cannot relate. He swallows dryly, tongue too big for his mouth, and coughs, trying not to choke. The day changes; he quite literally _feels_ it as it does, moving from today to tomorrow, yesterday to today, past to present, present to future. It shivers down his spine, settles in one of his aches, _whooshes_ in his belly.

Water drips down the side of the tub. The heat of the water continues to mix with the smoke of his weed, fogging up the mirrors. There are two in this bathroom: one above the sink, hiding the medicine cabinet, and the other on the back of the door, facing him. Richie is glad not to see what he looks like, but he can already imagine it. It’s not hard to put a name to the way he feels.

He wiggles his toes.

Time has moved at a pace he cannot understand. A blink ago, it was midnight. Now it is twelve-ten. Huh.

 _Call Stan,_ he thinks.

No, he doesn’t. Someone else does. His voice doesn’t sound like that, all deep and calm. Soothing. He’s a chaotic, frantic mess, even when he’s in his head, so maybe it’s his conscience.

He listens, though, willing his hand to move. If his conscience wants him to call Stan, he must.

His watch tells him it’s twelve-twelve now, as he dials the number. He’s had it memorized for years, probably since he was eleven and his mother let him make his own playdates. Not that he called them playdates at that age. But it is muscle memory now, punching in the digits, which is good because he is focused on the tiny twelve at his wrist.

It rings,

and it rings,

and it rings,

and—

“Do you _know_ what time it is, asshole? You could’ve woken my parents!”

“Hi,” Richie says brightly. “You can also wake your parents. You’re yelling. How’d you know it was me?”

Stan sighs. “Who else would call at this hour?” He’s probably in the hall, as far from his parents’ bedroom as possible, pinching the bridge of his nose. He is a very predictable person, an eighty-year-old stuck in a teenaged body. There is a high chance he’s in a bathrobe. “It’s late, Rich. What’s so important that you had to call now? It’s a school night.”

Richie worries his lip between his teeth. He has a scab there from the last time he did this, biting down hard as he got punched in the face. “It’s November twentieth.”

“Yeah, that’s what happens,” Stan replies. “Clock strikes twelve, Cinderella loses her slipper, it’s a new day. Funny how that works. Can we talk about the passage of time tomorrow?”

“It’s Eddie’s birthday today,” Richie says. “He’s seventeen.”

Stan is silent for the space of a breath. Maybe longer. “Oh,” he replies, quiet.

He has forgotten about him, but Richie doesn’t care. All of their friends have, so Richie remembers for them. Richie can’t forget. Won’t allow it.

“Do you think his mom’s going to do something nice for him or will she just ignore it?” he asks, word vomit coming up quick and insistent. “She always hated his birthday. I wonder if she still does. You think she acts the same? You think she hates that he has to grow up? She always acted like he didn’t, like she wasn’t aware he wouldn’t stay little forever. It’s like _Peter Pan,_ but weirder.”

Stan clicks his tongue, a sound that could be judgmental but isn’t because it’s Richie he’s listening to. Stan judges and criticizes everyone in their grade and that includes their friends, but he does not do so with Richie. He attends to his ramblings regardless of their subject matter, and he pets his hair when he gets too high. He still continues to press close when they read comics, and he doesn’t balk at sharing a bed during sleepovers, never once uncomfortable with the fact that Richie likes girls _and_ boys.

He is still Richie’s friend—his best, _best_ friend—and Richie is very grateful for him. For all the things he did, for what he will do, and for him now, on the other end of the phone.

He presses on, taking the silence in stride. He has a lot of thoughts. A lot of questions. He’s glad his conscience told him to call Stan. He thinks he’d feel too full if he kept all of this inside. He’s kept too much to himself to give himself room for this.

“Do you think he’ll still want those pancakes? The ones with all the syrup, and the chocolate, and the whipped cream, and the fruit? There were like _eight_ of them and he’d eat them all and _still_ get ice cream after. Do you think he does the same things he did when he was little? Orders all the stuff that’s real bad for him because _fuck_ his mom?”

“Richie,” Stan says.

“He’s seventeen now,” Richie repeats. “He was the baby.”

“I know.”

The haze behind his eyes, in his brain, intensifies. It clouds his vision, has him sliding down the wall. His shirt rides up, spine pressed to the floor, wet and cold. _Baby._ Eddie was a _baby._

The ceiling looms above him. The phone is a bulky, heavy weight in his left hand. He can feel his ear pressing into the side of his head. It aches at the tip of it, like it needs to be cracked.

He blinks, listens to Stan breathe, and the room expands.

He blinks, listens to Stan breathe, and the room shrinks.

He blinks, listens to Stan breathe, and imagines him at home, dressed in sensible pajamas.

He blinks, listens to Stan breathe, and sees Eddie’s face the way it was the last time he’d seen it. If he’d known it would be the final time, maybe he would’ve looked longer. Fucked the consequences and questions it could raise, a focused gaze, committing something to memory. He sees it now, though, all loopy with eyes glazed over. He’s not sure Eddie even knew he was there, but he smiled at him, big and pleased, and pressed his entire body into his side, like he was glad Richie was there.

But that can’t be right. If he was glad Richie was there, if he had _known_ he showed up when everyone else couldn’t even get through the door, he wouldn’t have stopped talking to him. He _wouldn’t._

Richie sniffles.

“You should go to bed,” Stan advises. Richie pictures him at his staircase, sitting on the top step. Maybe he’s wearing slippers. He has two pairs.

Richie glances at the towel he rolled up and shoved into the crack between the floor and the bathroom door. It keeps everything inside, makes the room sweltering and foggy, and it is yellow. He picked it because it was the closest to grab, but maybe he also picked it because it’s Eddie’s favorite color.

Maybe it’s not Eddie’s favorite color anymore.

 _You don’t want to go to sleep,_ he thinks.

No, he doesn’t. Someone else does. His voice doesn’t sound like that, icy and acidic, a scratch like nails on a chalkboard. He doesn’t know what this is, but it’s interesting to keep filed away for later, for Halloween, maybe. Besides, it’s right. He doesn’t want to go to sleep.

“I want to go to the clubhouse,” he says.

Immediately: “It’s midnight.”

“Can’t use that excuse,” Richie replies. “It’s past midnight. I want to go.”

“You shouldn’t,” Stan tries. “The curfew.”

( _The missing kids. Sally Mueller’s poster on every available surface. Greta Bowie crying, lonely without her. The family that lives down the block from Richie, their son is missing, too. He’s five. He likes trains._ )

Richie sucks at his teeth, stares at the steam as it rises, as it coats everything. “Come with me.”

“It’s mid—it’s past midnight,” Stan says.

“So?” Richie stands, and it takes a bit of effort and a whole lot of concentration on not falling down. He has no balance. No knees. He may be a baby deer. He presses his elbow into the lip of the sink, centering himself. He runs a finger along the glass of the mirror, wiping at the condensation.

It is Eddie’s birthday. Eddie is seventeen. Eddie is somewhere Richie cannot find. He could still be here, but if he was, he’d talk to him, he hopes, and he hasn’t seen hair nor hide of the Kaspbraks in years. He must’ve moved away, like Mrs. K was always threatening.

What matters is Eddie is not near him. The sad truth is Eddie hates him.

Richie gets high as balls in his bathroom every year on his birthday because he misses someone he hasn’t seen since he was thirteen years old. He’s pathetic.

“You’re not,” says Stan.

 _I am,_ he thinks.

It’s his voice this time. It’s not wrong.

“Remember when Mrs. K refused to acknowledge him turning ten, so we threw him a surprise party at Bill’s?” he asks. He doodles Eddie’s name and dots the _i_ with a heart.

Stan wouldn’t recall that story without Richie’s prompting, but he laughs all the same as the memory comes back to him. It’s easy on Richie’s ears, the sound of it, quiet and contained as not to wake the other Urises. Richie loves Stan for this, for indulging him, even when he knows he has to be up early for, like, mathletes or something lame like that.

“Your cake tasted like shit,” Stan says, slow and deliberate. He’s flooded with the reminiscence in a way Richie can never understand. He’s filed all these away and has pulled them out on rainy days when he’s especially sad. He’s never lost them. “You were banned from desserts forever after that. I always wondered why that was. We still don’t let you.”

“Not even pudding,” Richie agrees, “which you make from a fucking box.” He wipes his thumb along the name, clears the glass. “Eddie ate it all, though, even if it did suck.” He’d made a scene of licking the frosting from his mouth, too. Had gotten it all over his face. “Mrs. K really did a number on him that day. He didn’t understand why she was being so mean to him, why she was so _mad,_ and when we—” His voice breaks, and he swallows, covering it up. “He ate the whole thing just because he was happy someone acknowledged him. That someone made it for him.”

“Richie,” Stan murmurs, tone gentle and unassuming. Richie doesn’t like the way it sounds. Wants him to stop. But Stan can’t know that. Stan doesn’t know that. Richie suddenly can’t use his mouth, isn’t even sure he _has_ one.

He checks for it.

There it is. Obviously. Thankfully.

He wouldn’t—couldn’t—be Trashmouth without it.

Stan goes on, oblivious to Richie’s plight. “It wasn’t because someone made it for him.” He goes slow with this information, like Richie is a spooked animal he needs to coax from, like, a tree. “It was because _you_ did.”

There is one second where he does not register these words, still trying to determine if this is, indeed, his mouth, or if it is someone else’s sewed to his face. It looks different from the one he’s used to.

And then he bursts into tears.

It _hurts._ They’re heavy against his cheeks, hard against the back of his eyes. He stings when he blinks, spilling them over his eyelashes, and burning a trail down his cheeks. They drip down the edge of his jaw, dangle precariously, and then splash into the sink. They collect at the bow of his lip, slip into his mouth, are salty against his tongue. His mouth fills with the tang—sadness has a very distinct flavor; one Richie is quite accustomed to. It is a keen aftertaste to all he thinks, does, eats.

“I’m going to the clubhouse,” he says. He sounds snotty, stuffed up.

“It’s on the other side of town from you,” Stan tells him. “You shouldn’t. It’s far. There’s a curfew for a reason.”

( _The body parts they found in the Kenduskeag. The spike in funerals. Tiny coffins. Terrible parents being found out. Rise in hate crimes. Death around every corner._ )

“Fuck the curfew,” Richie says. “I want to go. I _need_ to—”

He stops himself there, has the sense to keep what he wants to say next to himself, even though he knows Stan won’t make fun of him. It’s just… it’s one thing to think it, and another to say it. _I need to go where I know he used to be._

Better yet: _I need to go where I know part of him still is._

Richie blinks at his reflection, warped in the wet glass.

Stan says, “Let me change into a sweater. Please wear a coat.”

Richie’s eyes are still rimmed with tears. He pushes his glasses up into his hair and wipes at them with the back of his hand. “You don’t have to come.”

“Fuck you if you think I’m letting you walk around like this at _one in the morning,_ ” Stan snaps at him, good-natured and protective. “Fifteen minutes at the corner where we used to meet to walk to school.”

“I love you,” Richie says, because he does.

Stan hums but does not say it back. That’s fine; Richie hears it anyway. Stan loves without words, has done his whole life. He chooses to express himself and his feelings with actions, and you would think him cold and emotionless if you did not know how to read him. If you were not close with him. Tomorrow, he will be dead tired and complaining about his lack of sleep, but he will never blame Richie for it. And Richie will buy him coffee and give him his comfiest sweatshirt to wear, the one with the holes worn into the sleeves, and finish his science homework when he hands it to him at lunch.

Richie writes _happy birthday_ in large loops on the mirror and then slides his hand through it.

2

Stan is already at the corner when Richie manages to drag himself down the block. He has something sweet-smelling in a thermos and a sandwich in a baggie. He offers the latter to Richie, sniffs at his drink, and wordlessly begins the trek to the Barrens.

He is wearing a sweater that is much too long for him—there is a chance it actually belongs to either Richie or Bill—and it falls just above his knees, where his striped pajama pants clash beautifully with the jacket he has bundled over all of it. He looks a literal _mess,_ and Richie’s heart warms at the sight of him. At the thought of Stan changing his clothes, and sneaking out, and going into the kitchen to make him fucking _food._

Richie takes a bite of his sandwich (bologna, cheese, mayo) and reaches his hand out.

Stan does not look as he takes it, just brings his thermos to his mouth and smacks his lips when he realizes his tea is still too hot. He sticks his tongue out, burnt, and Richie snorts.

He swings their hands between them, for once not worried about anyone telling him how a boy is supposed to be friends with another boy.

3

The door latch is half frozen.

It takes their combined strengths to pry it open, the promise of an early winter holding tight to its foundations. Richie tugs and goes sprawling back when it flies open with a creaking yawn that rattles the ground and sends (inferior) (unimportant) ( _I’ve seen all of these already_ ) birds fluttering to safer spaces.

Richie peers down. It’s dark. He didn’t think to bring a flashlight.

Didn’t think much, honestly.

What was his plan? Was he going to—to just sit here and wallow in darkness? Finally succumb to it? And what was _it_ that he would be succumbing to?

Maybe he was just going to ride out his high here, surrounded by old familiarity, pretending that every noise he heard above was Eddie and his dirty white socks clamoring down the ladder. He can hear him now, clear as day, like he’s been transported back: _We’re going to die down here, Ben, this is going to collapse and we’re going to be crushed and we are—_

 _Pathetic,_ Richie thinks again.

He clears his head of Eddie with a shake. He doesn’t leave, but that’s not new.

Stan shoves his thermos into Richie’s hands and searches his pockets. He pulls a flashlight out of one, switches it on, and sends a beam of white light down the rickety stairs. With a wave of his hand, he gestures for Richie to go.

Richie hesitates, looking down again, and untwists the lid he’s holding instead. “What is this?”

“Tea.” Stan beckons again. “Go.”

“What kind?”

“I don’t know,” Stan says. “Vanilla, maybe. _Go._ ”

Richie squints, can only make out the first three or four steps down, and takes a tentative sip of Stan’s drink. The flavors explode on his tongue, warming him, and he climbs down, slow and steady as not to trip. The light is nothing but a weak burst when he gets to the bottom, the darkness looming over everything like a heavy shroud. His heart skips a beat in his chest.

Stan follows after him, moving quicker and more erratically now that he knows the route. Landing next to Richie, he mutters about the lanterns they used to use, y’know, _years ago,_ and rummages around for them.

Richie says, “Your tea is caramel vanilla actually,” and drinks some more of it. He grips it tightly in his hands, the heat only a bit uncomfortable against his palms, and tries to bite down the regret he feels for coming here.

His eyes already do not focus well, but in the clubhouse it’s even worse. Everything has more shadows than it needs to, if he can even make them out. It is full of a murky darkness that seems impenetrable. To think they hung out here at all hours of the day. To think he’d _fallen asleep_ down here.

To think, more importantly, that Ben made this with his _bare fucking hands._

Richie ruminates on that, on how a thirteen-year-old had the smarts to make this, how it has not fallen to pieces yet despite the time and the foot traffic it’d seen the summer of ’89. He licks his lips, gaze darting about, and is flooded with memories even in the pitch black.

Stan finds the lanterns, which still somehow fucking work. Shouldn’t the batteries have died by now? The place floods with light, brightening the place enough to make it less imposing.

Spiders are shocked by the illumination, scuttling in various directions. There are so many of them that they cover parts of the floor in thick, dark patches. Richie fucking hates it, feeling like he can see all of their legs and all of their bodies, feeling the sensation of them crawling all over his skin. He itches his elbow. They disappear into corners, gone as if they had never been there in the first place, but Stan still sucks in a startled breath, waving his flashlight around, searching for them.

Richie’s gaze follows the beam of light, head heavy and heart in his throat. He is not looking for the arachnids. He’s taking it all in.

 _The clubhouse._ Shit.

The place they all used to go, hiding out from parents, bullies, and sometimes themselves. They could be anyone they wanted down here. They didn’t have to be who the world said they were, who they decided they had to be aboveground. There was no pretending, just existing, and Richie had a lot of emotional crises down here, safe in the dirt walls. In this hole, they were losers and it was never a death sentence. It was loser with a capital- _L._ It was different. It was something. Nothing. Everything.

And now it is too much.

Richie is just dizzy enough that it’s inconvenient. He kicks through the stuff they’d left behind, probably unaware they’d never see it again, and he wonders when they stopped coming here. He was the first to go, he knows, finding solace in the constant emptiness of his own home. Eventually the rest of them followed, turning his basement into the sanctuary this had been. They could hide in there, too, if they needed, and Richie’s parents never cared what they did as long as they kept the volume down and didn’t wake them up.

He trips over an old pair of Bill’s sneakers, laces frayed at the edges. There is a collection of Bev’s cassettes, a smorgasbord of genres: punk and rock, dance and New Kids on the Block. They’d managed to pin a poster of The Clash on the wall opposite him; the bottom curls up, unable to stand the test of time. The collection of radios are huddled beneath it, antennae up like they’re going to get a signal, and he hears the music playing, the tug of war they’d all had. Billy Joel echoes ( _Piano Man_ ), and Elton John ( _I’m Still Standing_ ), and The B-52’s ( _Love Shack_ ).

That last one makes the bile race up Richie’s throat.

Eddie was obsessed with that fucking song, and anything by fucking Cher or Whitney Houston. He and Bev would dance around the clubhouse like lunatics when they managed to beat everyone out in the end, not like it was some great big feat. Ben and Bill could never say no to Bev and Richie would let Eddie play fuckin’ disco if it meant he could stare at the flush on his cheeks.

He can see it now, the way the pink spread from his ears down to his throat, settling prettily at his collarbones, and Eddie materializes in front of him. Bev is there, too, grabbing his hands and making him twirl her, and then she him, and they’re tripping over each other.

Richie loved watching them. Loved watching Eddie, who rarely let loose enough to do shit like that. His mother monitored his music choices back home, had him listening to classical music for reasons like _growth_ or some shit.

He grits his teeth, tells the illusions, “I don’t want to be high anymore.” He tells this to Bev, who ignores him and twists away. To Eddie, who looks right at him and _beams._

The room spins around Richie, following their movements, fast, faster, fast _est._ He can hear them now, Eddie and Bev, giggling and talking. It’s nothing concrete, nothing he can make out fully, but it’s like they’re here with him now.

It’s a jarring sensation, one that throws him off-kilter. He flaps his arms, trying to find his balance, trying to steady himself. There’s nothing for him to grab onto, nothing to keep him upright. The floor slants and he slides, he thinks. His foot moves out, trying to equalize.

He can’t.

“ _Stan,_ ” he blurts, frantic. His heart palpitates, insistent and hard against his chest. His fingers claw into the air, groping for Stan’s shoulder. He is not there.

 _Nothing_ is there, just Richie and a clubhouse from 1989.

He drops the thermos, which clangs to the ground and rolls right through Bev’s toes. She’s not wearing shoes. Why would she ever not wear shoes here? The bologna and cheese sandwich comes right back up; he tastes it in the back of his throat. It isn’t as good the second time around.

He struggles forward, tripping over his shoes, and losing the balance he never had in the first place. He lands on his knees right near the hammock, which somehow chews him up and spits him out just by existing, and throws up, right there into a pile of moldy comics. It’s an _X-Men_ one he destroys. He remembers Eddie being particularly excited about it. Richie didn’t like it, but he liked watching Eddie read it, which is why he would lie and say he was waiting for him when he’d already looked at it an hour earlier every single time.

Richie throws up again, tea, sandwich, and stomach acid covering the mutants on the front. He feels Stan grip his shoulders, hold him still, and he tries to shake him off, grabbing the comic. He rips it up, the stupid thing, not caring that his hands are now covered in his vomit or that a piece of Jean Gray’s infuriatingly smug face is stuck to his thumb.

He looks at her, angry and tired and so very sad, and demands, “Why’d he leave? Why’d he _leave me?_ ”

Her smile seems to grow more devilish, like she knows the answer, but she can’t. She doesn’t. She’s a stupid superhero. She doesn’t know shit. She’s not allowed to know more than him.

Stan digs his knuckles into the tense muscles of Richie’s back, a facsimile of a massage albeit a bit more painful. It grounds him. Keeps him here, present, when he feels like he’s about to transcend this astral plane. He uses his awareness to glare at Storm now and he rips her through the middle.

“I didn’t mean to do anything wrong,” he says. To her, to Jean’s face on his finger. To the clubhouse in general. “I didn’t mean… I only…” He fists what remains of the comic. “I only loved him,” he breathes out, turning to look at Stan. He’s blurry. Fuzzy around the edges. “Was that bad? Should I not have? I tried not to, I really did, I just couldn’t… I didn’t…”

“No,” says Stan. His brow is furrowed in that stern, serious way of his. “There is nothing wrong with that. There is—it’s good, Richie, that you love him. No one is allowed to tell you it’s wrong.”

Richie sniffles and wipes his nose, getting snot and vomit all over his cheek. “Then why’d he leave?” he asks again. “Why didn’t he say goodbye? Did I—did he know? Did I disgust him? Did I—”

He flinches hard when Stan’s hand comes close to his face. It’s a reflex that has him feeling guilty and embarrassed as he catches Stan’s gaze. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “I shouldn’t have… we shouldn’t have… this was a bad idea.”

Stan gently wipes at Richie’s mouth. His sleeve, fisted tightly over his hand, comes back slightly damp and discolored. It will stain if he does not wash it soon. Smell, too, like how the inside of Richie’s mouth tastes.

“Is it like this every year?” he asks, like he is not in the process of cleaning up his best friend as if he were a baby incapable of movement.

 _Like what?_ Richie wants to ask. _A colossal mess? Is he always like this, sitting in a puddle of his vomit, ripping up comics Eddie likes as snippets of memories of him play around him?_

No. It’s not like this. It’s never as bad.

This year is the worst.

He shouldn’t have come here. _Why_ is he here?

“I normally stay in my bathroom,” he says and does not elaborate. This does not happen, the seeing things, the vomiting, the _scene_ he’s making. _I don’t think I’ve gotten this high before. Did I mix things? Did I drink?_

“I don’t know,” Stan says. _Am I thinking out loud?_ “Yes, you are. Why’d you call me this year, Rich? You’ve never… I didn’t know you did this.”

Richie licks his lips, regrets it, and spits. “I’m the only one who remembers him.”

“That’s not true.”

“I am,” Richie insists. “I remember him more and better than the rest of you. Bill can’t even remember his fucking _name_ on a good day, and I—I remember everything. How he used to talk to me, his dumbass order at the diner. He used to dip his fries in his fuckin’ milkshake. I still have his extra inhaler in my backpack. I fucking _carry it around._ ”

Jesus Christ. The extra inhaler. What the fuck is he still doing with that? What does he think is going to happen? Eddie’s going to show up out of nowhere and have an asthma attack and, and, and—Richie is going to whip it out like a fucking hero and save the day?

Oh my god, he’s going to throw up again.

“Why’d you call me?” Stan repeats.

Richie swallows roughly to keep it down, the rising nausea, and shrugs helplessly. “I needed…”

What did he need? _Why_ did he call? Normally he’s content enough to coast on the bathroom floor, starfishing out on the rug and letting the water run and run, wasting it and destroying his father’s chance of a hot shower the next morning. But this year…

This year, he thought _call Stan,_ and he did. There’s all there was to it.

He says, “I needed someone to know I was coming here. You needed to know I’d be at the clubhouse.”

“Okay, but _why?_ ” Stan asks, like Richie fucking knows.

He’s high. Nothing makes sense. He has the critical thinking skills of a toddler. He is _seeing things._ His shit must be laced with something because he’s never gotten this fucked before. Who’d he buy from? He doesn’t remember. Is this still the stuff from Mike? Mike knows a guy and he gets—

Stan clutches his cheeks. Pinches. “Why,” he repeats. “Why call me? Why come to the clubhouse in the first place? You never want to come here.”

“Well, I called you because you’re my best friend,” Richie replies automatically. “We are very close. You’re probably the only person I trust to see me have a complete emotional breakdown.”

“That’s sweet. Very touching,” says Stan. “But _why_ , if you’ve never done it before?”

Richie has no fucking answer. He does not know.

Stan looks at him like he’s some sort of difficult math equation, one part irritated and the other interested—fact: Stan’s dick gets hard for math—and Richie has to tear his gaze away, the intensity discomfiting.

He should have stayed on the bathroom floor. Drowned himself in the shower, maybe. Called down into the sink drain and asked Bev’s old friends what they’re up to. Want to strangle him with hair? It’d be better than this.

“Shut up,” Stan orders. “Don’t make fucking jokes like that.” ( _We all float down here._ ) “Answer me. Why?”

Richie hates that word.

“I don’t _know,_ ” he says, looking wildly about the clubhouse. He has a lot of questions about it, now that he can’t answer Stan, and he’s old enough to understand the basics of gravity and foundational structure. His mind races. Is this safe? How is it standing? How did Ben do it? It’s so impressive.

There are so many memories here. Too many. All of them nice, but not what Richie needs nor wants. Why’s he here? What’s the _point?_ His old best friend turns seventeen and he loses his fucking shit? His mind? Why can he so clearly see everyone the way they used to be? Why is he _hallucinating?_

A version of Bill walks right through Stan, tall and commanding. Stan’s nostrils flare as if he can feel him, his cheek twitching, but he keeps his gaze locked on Richie, waiting for a better explanation.

Richie, on the other hand, follows the figure as it moves. Bill says something to Mike by the poster. He’s stuttering a lot; Richie can tell this just by the way his jaw moves even without hearing the words. Bill is mad. Infuriated. They’ve all agreed they’ve seen the clown, all but Richie, and Ben’s obsessive mapping of Derry has shown them where the thing lives. Bill wants to go to Neibolt and investigate. Bill wants to go to Neibolt and bash its fucking head in. He thinks his brother is there. Richie and Stan and the rest of them—they thought Georgie dead at that point but didn’t say a word. Not yet. That was for later, after they all followed him into that shithole.

Movement by the radio grabs his attention next. Bev squats down to change the cassette—how she won that battle is baffling, especially with Bill the way he is—and Ben looks pleased where he’s sinking into the beanbag chair. She smiles at him like they’re sharing a secret. Another fucking New Kids album. Richie’d groan if he didn’t so desperately miss the way things used to be.

But he still does not want to watch Ben pine, nor does he want to watch his face fall when Bev inevitably casts him aside for Bill, so Richie tracks his gaze back to Stan. The things he sees ( _memories_ ) do not include the two of them. He wonders if it’s because they’re already here, occupying the space, and there is not enough room for doubles.

He does not get the chance to focus back on Stan, though. Behind his matted hair, Eddie drops down onto the steps. His one shoe is untied, his shorts are bright yellow, and he has a book. That marks this day as one of the last before their trip to Neibolt; Eddie had gone to the library before meeting up with them, convinced he could find something of use there. He’d come back with something dumb about monsters.

He crosses his feet at the ankle, where his socks bunch, and peruses the book like he’s—like—

Thirteen-year-old Richie is not there, but he hears what he said anyway, once he spotted him. He makes a joke about _Scooby Doo,_ says to Eddie, _You’d look cute in that little ascot, Eds._

Naturally, Eddie tells him to fuck off, but his mouth twitches.

Richie doesn’t like this part of the memory because it stirs something up in his gut. He’d—he’d had this misplaced _hope,_ he’ll call it, after that compliment, after the way he and Eddie would cling to each other—and only each other—in fear. Eddie gravitated towards him and he had thought—he thought…

He blinks the memory and the subsequent feelings away, but they stick. Eddie flips through his book. It’s got a cartoon vampire on the cover, coming out of its coffin. His face does that thing it does when he’s interested—furrowed brow and the sucking of his lip into his mouth—and he looks closer, considering something.

Richie says to Stan, “It felt like the right thing to do,” but he doesn’t know what that is supposed to mean. He’s forgotten the question. Forgotten everything.

Stan is highly logical. He can pull solutions and answers out of anything, but he cannot comprehend the inner workings of Richie’s mind on a good day, much less a day where he’s probably accidentally done shrooms or, like, fuckin’ _acid._ Richie wants to apologize for this, for being a shitshow and alarming him so badly he followed him to the Barrens, but the words do not come. His jaw opens and then clicks shut as quickly as it did, teeth grinding together.

The Eddie on the steps looks up from his book, blinks owlishly, and makes eye contact with him. His cheeks steadily grow pink until Richie is sure he can feel the heat off of them from here. Is this where he sat that day? Most likely, right? He loved the hammock.

But was this what it was like to be caught in Eddie’s gaze?

 _No,_ he thinks.

It’s not his voice, but it’s right, just like the other one was. This is not how it felt. He remembers that much ( _remembers everything_ ) and Eddie was always warm and welcoming, if not a little shit. He was all over the top energy and quick insults that matched Richie’s jokes, a language all their own.

This… this is cold, slimy, _dirty._ It coats Richie’s skin and makes him want to take a shower, like he’s been drenched in oil or, or, or—sewer water. He shudders, looks away, and elects to watch the cogs turn in Stan’s head. He’s probably trying to make heads or tails of Richie’s idiocy, which is fair. Probably trying to figure out why he’s friends with such a dumbass and how he got convinced to leave the relative safety of his bed just to watch him freak the fuck out in a literal hole in the ground.

A _hole in the ground!_ That’s what this place is. A! Hole!

All the while, Eddie looks at him. It’s unnerving. It’s ( _what he used to do, Richie. He’d look and look and look and then turn his head so quickly when you caught him._ )

“The right thing,” Stan muses aloud. His frown remains, but it is the only answer Richie could give him. The only thing that was, well, _right._

He gets it, though: Stan hates not understanding things. Hates when they are not so easily pulled apart for him to find their meaning. Not in the sense that he thinks everything is black and white, of course not, but in the sense that there’s purpose and an end goal to each and every decision. It’s why he likes numbers, math. They make sense. They are concrete. There is a right way and a wrong way and very rarely leeway in between. If there is, it is explained perfectly.

Richie is not as simple as math. It is why their friendship is so interesting. Stan cannot, at the surface level, understand Richie in the slightest, but he tries, and he succeeds more often than anyone else. And he is trying now, to figure out what’s going on here, to unravel the threads of feelings that are so tightly wound inside Richie.

He is Richie’s best friend, even if they are opposites, even if Stan is put together and Richie often falls apart. He does not, will not, abandon him. When Richie calls, he answers. When Richie needs him, he comes. It is how they are. It is, if you are interested in knowing, how they always will be.

“That…” Stan pauses. Shadows flicker across the planes of his face. “Okay,” he allows, and he looks pained as he continues. “We’ve established why me, that’s good, but I think we need to figure out why _here_ when you’re never here and why _this year._ ”

Richie unclenches his jaw, starts to say _I don’t know,_ starts to say _I just miss him a lot this year._

Maybe, he thinks, it’s because this is the last year. There’s nothing ahead of them except leaving now, just college, if they want it, and adulthood, which they can’t avoid. They’ll all get out of this fucking town and they’ll never look back, and all that Richie has to hold onto, it’s—it’s gone.

Eddie’s _really_ gone, and that makes him panic.

There is no way to say all that without sounding like a certified freak, without a one-way ticket to Juniper Hill, but he is saved from that by the Eddie on the stairs.

The Eddie on the stairs closes his book with a loud thud. On that particular day, he’d found something he thought interesting and made them listen to him. It was about silver, and they all considered it, the power of the metal in reality and lore, as if something out of a kid’s book was going to solve their current problem.

He doesn’t talk about monster-killing, though, the Eddie on the stairs. He swipes his hand over the cover, leans his elbows on it, holds his chin in one hand. He looks at Richie ( _slimy, dirty, wrong_ ) and says, “You know why you’re here.”

Stan _jumps._ His fingernails pierce Richie’s skin at his wrist and his knees slam right back into the ground as he lands. Richie feels the vibration, thinks maybe he hears the strain of bone there. “ _What,_ ” Stan bleats, eyes wide. He twists around so quickly his forehead bangs against Richie’s temple.

Richie grapples to hold onto Stan, squeezes a finger as the Eddie on the steps smiles. That black tar, that dark vomit, that _Death_ spills from his mouth, stains the front of his clothes, ruins his book. “I asked you to come,” he tells them. “ _I’ve missed you!_ ”

Dread slides down Richie’s spine, slow like molasses, filling him uncomfortably. He moves forward, close to Stan, and hisses, “You see that, too? You see him? Stan. Stan. Stan, you see it?”

It’s _It_ , actually. _It_ with a capital- _I._ Why’d it take Richie so long to figure that out? To feel It here?

“Hi, Stan,” Eddie greets, which answers that first question. He flicks his gaze to Richie, smile broadening, teeth dark and discolored. “ _Hi, Richie._ ” He bats his eyelashes, looking shy and bashful. “Dontcha miss me?”

( _Wrong, wrong, wrong._ )

This is the version of Eddie Richie saw in Neibolt, the one he sees in his nightmares. A head, popping out of a mattress, choking on the same shit covering his face. He thinks he was trying to tell him something back at the house when Richie saw him, but he couldn’t, the liquid too much. He looks the same here: pale, dying, dead, and Richie cannot save him still. He is forced to stare at him like this, curled up on the floor, holding on to Stan.

Eddie moves closer. Stan scrambles back, tugging Richie with him. He says, “I miss you.”

He says, “I dream about you all the time.”

He is tender, and sweet, and talking only to Richie, who can only stare, dumbfounded, even as Stan tries to wrangle him up.

“Don’t get caught in it,” Stan snaps. He shakes his arm so hard he feels it in his neck. “Come on. Get up.”

Richie doesn’t move. Richie goes limp. Richie asks, “Eddie?”

 _Not Eddie,_ he thinks, but that does not stop him. He is a victim to his pining, to his wishes, to his desires. He sees an Eddie—any Eddie—and loses all sense. What he would _give_ for this to be real.

“Yep.” Eddie giggles. _Wrong._ “I’m not that far, you know, Richie. I never was. You just never looked for me.”

Affronted, Richie blurts, “I _did._ I tried. I couldn’t—I couldn’t find you. Your mom wouldn’t—”

“My mom has never stopped you before,” Eddie interrupts. His cheeks rise with color, red this time. He’s mad. “You just gave up on me! You all did! You know what she’s like and you _left me_ with her!”

“I didn’t,” Richie cries out, the words torn from this throat. His greatest fear, right here in front of him: Eddie thinking he abandoned him. Eddie thinking Richie didn’t care. “I tried!”

“Evidently not hard enough,” Eddie snips.

Stan tries to block his path, tries to get in the way, but Eddie moves and Richie cranes his neck around him. “Richie,” Stan insists. “This is not Eddie. It’s a _trick,_ it’s—”

“ _No!_ ” Eddie shouts, holding his hands out. “I would _never_ trick you. I love you. You’re my favorite. I just want you to find me. I want you to come closer. I want us to be together, don’t you want us to be together?” He widens his eyes, lip curling as Stan tries to interfere again. “Richie, I have a secret, too, d’ya wanna hear it? I think you’ll like it.”

Richie’s heart beats loud and hard in his ears. “You do? I will? Why?”

Stan trips backwards as he pulls hard on Richie, the force of it sending them both sideways. Richie falls into him, clutches, but never looks from Eddie, grime and all. It’s been so long. He doesn’t care.

“Come closer,” Eddie says. “It’s a secret for a reason.”

Richie’s fingers twitch. His leg shifts. His knee bends, like he’s going to get up.

Stan presses down on his thigh. “Don’t.”

 _There is another way,_ a voice in Richie’s head thinks.

 _Go to him,_ a different one says.

 _Do not,_ the first one argues. _Stay._

Eddie stares at him, eyes widening, eyes pleading.

And Richie—

Richie does not move. He remains half in Stan’s lap, even as Stan tries to keep him down, tries to wriggle away from him into standing up. The voices continue to fight inside him, his conscious and his heart battling it out, but eventually one wins.

“I’m sorry, Eddie,” he says, and he wants to say _Eds,_ but it doesn’t feel right. He swallows the urge. “I don’t think I want to.”

Eddie frowns and wipes at his chin. “You don’t want to know my secret?” He looks so fucking sad Richie may combust. He looks like he did when his mother carted him away, yelling at them all for harming her son.

“Eddie,” he pleads.

“I don’t understand. I thought you missed me.”

“I did!” Richie insists, but still something keeps him rooted to the spot and it is not just Stan. He does not want to get closer. “I _do,_ ” he amends. “I miss you every day.”

“Then why won’t you come near me? Why are you so far?” Eddie’s eyes fill up with tears, and that is jarring; that breaks whatever is left of Richie’s heart right in two. But then his eyes turn yellow, and that isn’t right. Eddie’s never had eyes like that. He doesn’t—

Mrs. K always made it seem like he would catch any and all diseases under the sun. Real ones, fake ones, ones that only affect pets. Eddie was susceptible to all. She made him get every shot, had him take every preventative vitamin and mineral, and once convinced him his cough was actual chronic bronchitis. She kept him home for two weeks straight in the winter because he had scarlet fever. It was just your basic strep throat.

All of this happened to him, but he never once had eyes that looked like that: tinged at the whites, wetter than the crying implies. _Sickly._

In fact, regardless of the amount of times he was told he was, he never once looked ill.

“Tell me from there,” Richie proposes. “Not to be rude or break our trust, but I’d probably tell Stan anyway, even if it is a secret. Sorry.”

Eddie looks at him, face pinched, like he’s mad he’s here. Like he wasn’t expecting him. “I… that’s fine,” he concedes, “but it’ll be better if you’re closer. You can tell him, but I want to tell _you_ first.”

Stan pinches the skin at the back of his neck. It is a clear _no._

Richie listens. “I’m… I’m good here, man, why don’t you just tell me and we can—we can talk it out like we are right now? It means nothing, me not wanting to be close, it’s just—I’m—so listen, right, I got, like, super high today and I can’t really move my—”

Eddie hisses like a cat, the sound sharp between his teeth like a harsh whistle. Richie shudders, startled by it, and watches as Eddie’s face—is it?—that’s not—it’s… _elongating?_

“Get the fuck up,” Stan breathes, slapping at Richie’s back. “It’s not Eddie. Can you see that now?”

“I… _yeah,_ Stanley, I fucking knew it wasn’t Eddie,” he shoots back. “Thanks, man. Real astute.”

“Shut up,” Stan hisses. “Come on. Up, up, up. I don’t like where this—”

Richie lets him manhandle him up, still staring as Eddie’s features shift and sharpen. Fear grows somewhere in his belly, spreading through all his nerves until his heart is a pounding mess, convinced that… that…

Oh, no.

No, no, no, no, _no._

Hair grows where it doesn’t normally. Eddie’s nose twitches, lengthens. Is a snout.

“ _Stan._ ” Richie yelps, whacking him, gripping him. “Stan!”

“Fine,” Eddie’s voice says, twisting into something else. Into the one he’d heard before, in his bathroom. He knew he recognized it. “If that’s not going to get you, maybe this will.”

It’s a punch to the gut, Eddie ( _tiny and cute_ ) turning into the fucking Teenage Werewolf.

Richie watches it happen, horrified, and the sound that is ripped from his throat is not one he ever wants to discuss.

He can’t tell what’s worse: this or Neibolt-Eddie. He’s been afraid of this creature his whole life, ever since he saw that fucking movie. Double feature at the Aladdin with Ben and Bev, a few days into summer vacation. It frightened him, how the guy had no choice, how he had to turn into this, this awful, terrible thing. How he was something everyone ran from, everyone _feared._

If he has to die here, at least let it be by Eddie’s hands. _Please_ let it be by Eddie’s hands, not the werewolf’s. Anything but this. Please, please, please.

The wolf snarls a laugh like he can hear him and takes a swing at him, just narrowly missing his face. Stan falls back, no longer a comforting figure behind him, and claws rip through Richie’s jacket and into the flesh of his shoulder. They come back bloody and full of skin; the wolf shakes it off.

Richie barely feels the pain, fear overruling, coursing through his bloodstream. Adrenaline forces him back to his feet, but his lack of coordination has him tripping over them and into the hammock. He flips it over, hits his head against the ground. His shoulder burns from this angle, wound pulling open, blood trickling down and into his armpit. He pushes himself up anyway, backing up, backing up, _backing up_.

He hits a wall.

The werewolf’s breath washes over Richie’s face, dank and hot, the thing somehow faster than Richie imagined. He cranes his neck back to bite, to feast on Richie’s throat, to dig his teeth in and _rip him apart._ The jaw cracks before him, and the mouth expands, and the teeth multiply.

Richie thinks on a desperate, crazed loop: _I’m just high, I’m just high, I’m just high. This is a bad dream, and I’m on the floor in my bathroom. I’m home, I’m home, I’m home. It’s not real, I’m home, and I’m high._

It laughs, but the wolf does not stop stretching out. Does not stop preparing. The words reverberate through the clubhouse like It is somewhere inside, around, enveloped in it. “I am never real enough for you Losers,” he says. “This is _real,_ Richie, it’s always been real, but you… you specifically wished for this.”

“I didn’t,” Richie blurts out. “I wished for _Eddie_.”

“Oh, but Richie, you _did,_ ” It coos. “You wished for this. I _heard_ it. I heard _you._ I granted it. You’ll get your precious Eddie-bear—”

“ _Don’t call him that,_ ” Richie snaps, incensed, like _that’s_ the issue here.

It ignores him. The wolf grows about three hundred more teeth.

Richie can see inside its mouth, into its throat. Bright, blinding lights live there, calling out to him. Inviting.

He knows better than to stare at them; he isn’t sure why he does, but it is _important_ that he not look, so he focuses on the saliva dripping from the largest fang. It collects at the sharp end, stays there, and drops down slow. It lands on Richie’s exposed wrist, burning him like he’s stuck his hand in acid or pressed his palm to a stovetop burner on the highest setting. He sucks in a breath, skin sizzling, as Its voice echoes again.

“You’ll get your wish, and I’ll get mine,” It says. “Tell me, Richie, what _would_ you give to get him back? I’ll make it happen. What would you _trade?_ Which of your friends’ lives are you willing to give up to me? We can make it easy. We can work together. One of the Losers for your little boyfriend.”

Richie blinks up, looking for the source of the sound, of the voice, so he can tell it to fuck off. There is nothing but the werewolf, who has paused in its quest to eat him, waiting for Richie’s response. Fuck this fucking clown if he thinks Richie will trade any one of his friends for… for…

Oh, no.

Oh, _shit._

He wouldn’t. No. _Get the thought out of your head,_ he thinks.

But It latches on. “Who?” he asks. “I think I know. I think you know. Say it out loud.”

Richie’s mouth opens like someone’s got their hands in it, pulling it. There’s a word on his tongue, a name on his lips, and he fights to keep it down. He will not say it, he will not say it, _he will not say it, you can’t make me—_

“But I can.” It laughs. “I made you see all this. I can make you say it. _Say it, Richie._ ”

He feels his teeth move, forming the first letter. The first sound.

“RICHIE, _DUCK!_ ” Stan yells, and the spell is broken.

He drops like a weight, collapsing to the floor, and something hits the back of the werewolf’s head.

It’s the radio, and it hits it so hard its nose smashes where Richie’s face had been. He falls over him, hairy knees in Richie’s shoulders, but Richie is vibrating with confusion, and anger, and fear—a deadly combination. He shoves the wolf back, pushing it into the hammock, rips one side from the post. It gets caught up, wrapped in the material, twisting around the ankles. It wriggles and writhes, kicking out, howling at him, at Stan, but the hammock holds strong, almost like it has a mind of its own.

Richie thinks he sees it tighten around It and races away, knowing an exit when he sees one, even if he’s only made it up.

Stan is already at the stairs, shoving at the door. Richie doesn’t remember it closing behind them. Another one of Its tricks, probably, to keep them trapped. But it won’t work. _It won’t._ Richie clamors up beside him, braces his palms on the wood, and the two of them shove, pressing hard and more intensely than they ever have.

When they manage to dislodge it, Stan scrambles up, heaving it open with his shoulders, wiggling out. He grabs Richie by the hands, slick with sweat, and helps him. Above them, the world has been untouched by the horrors underground. The night is still dark, and the stars still shine. The moon glows, large and round.

Richie opens his mouth and ruins that peace. “Stan, what the _fuck_ , Stan, I didn’t _know—_ ”

“Shut up, not now,” Stan interrupts. “Crisis mode later. Help me… I don’t… help me keep this thing closed. We need to keep It in there, and we need to tell the others. Fuck. What time is it? We need to tell Bill. Richie, come on. Get, like—get rocks. Something.”

“ _Rocks?_ ” Richie repeats. “The fuck are rocks going to do? Nothing will keep It shut up in there forever. Do you remember that summer? It was everywhere!”

“Rocks helped us before and they can help us again,” Stan snaps at him. “Just listen to me. We need to get as much space between us and this thing as possible. _Rocks,_ Richie!”

He thinks this is a stupid idea, but he gathers as many stones, and rocks, and pebbles as he can, dropping them unceremoniously on top of the door. These things worked when they threw them at _human beings._ They’re hardly going to keep _It_ trapped in a hole.

Stan somehow finds and rolls a fallen tree trunk over, probably wrecked from last week’s storm, and Richie helps him lay it across.

With the tree over the door, the angry tirade of the wolf silences. Richie can’t tell if that’s a good thing or not, but he hopes it is, if only because he’s exhausted, and he needs to go vomit again, and he’s shaking like a leaf.

He drops to the ground, presses his ear close to the latch, and listens.

Maybe It just disappeared? Maybe It knew It would lose? It has lost to them before, maybe…

He hears nothing but the shuddering rewind of a cassette tape, and then the opening chords of—

Wait.

He _knows_ this song.

He’s _listened_ to this song.

It’s the opening chords of—

4

_Eddie, my love, I love you so_  
_How I wanted you, you’ll never know_  
_Please, Eddie, don’t make me wait too long_

5

“I said _put distance between us,_ ” Stan snaps, “not _lay down and wait for It._ ” He hovers over Richie, dirt on his cheeks, a leaf in his hair, Richie’s vomit on his sleeves.

Richie stares at him, chest heaving, glasses warped with tears, saliva, and what looks like blood. He is very aware of the pain in his shoulder now, the way it strains. Moves against the tatters of his shirt, his jacket.

The song continues, slow and tantalizing. It mocks.

Maggie has this record. It’s The Chordettes, an old group. Richie found it by accident, lugged the player into his room, and had this song on a loop until he scratched the thing. He did this for the first two birthdays, thirteen and fourteen, and then discovered drugs were a better way to pass time.

“Distance,” Stan repeats. He holds his hands out, hoists him up. The momentum has Richie stumbling into him. He lets it happen, clings, and tries to find solace in his friend.

Stan’s heart pounds hard against his chest. It matches Richie’s, frenzied and frightened. Fear sludges through Richie’s veins, replacing the blood, it feels like. He tries to even out his breathing, mimicking Stan, chasing after a calm he cannot find.

It only revs him up, makes him more terrified, and the song beneath them is not helping. Neither is the memory of Eddie turning into the werewolf, two of his worst fears melding into one.

It _won_ last time. It tore down a carnival, feasted on the fear of over fifty people, and crawled back into its lair, fed enough to go back to sleep or whatever.

Ben said it happened every twenty-seven years, these massacres. It most certainly has _not_ been that long.

“Okay, let go of me,” Stan says after a moment too long. “Come on. We have to move. My house is closest, I can sneak you in, and tomorrow… I guess we’ll have to ditch, we need to tell everyone else—”

Richie tightens his hold, grips fistfuls of Stan’s jacket. “Not yet,” he says. “I need… you need to… I think it’s my fault, dude. I think… I think _I’m_ the reason It’s back.”

His mind spins. The voice had said—it said _what would you give?_ It said _what would you trade? Who?_ It said _you wished for this._

Did he?

Stan wriggles out of his embrace, takes a step back. Peers at him. “I’m going to need an explanation.”

“I went to the Kissing Bridge. I carved my initials into it.”

“Yes. Yours and Eddies. Years ago.” Stan nods. “You told me.”

“I went back.” Richie ducks his head to avoid Stan’s piercing stare. “Recently, after Georgie and Bill’s stutter. I thought… I thought if those things worked, if Bill’s wishes came true, mine could, too.”

“Richie…”

“Don’t, please,” Richie mutters. “I already know I’m a sad sack of shit.” He scrubs a hand down his face. His fingertips come back dirty. “It was just… look, Georgie was _dead,_ we all know that, even if Bill refused to admit it. He was dead, and then he wasn’t, and it was so… so _fantastical_ that I thought—”

Stan’s hand hovers over Richie’s shoulder, the bad one. It’s still bleeding. He can feel the heat of his palm over it and somehow it hurts even more. He should go to the fucking hospital.

“You wished for Eddie,” Stan says.

“Well, yeah,” Richie blurts, bitter. “He’s all I wish for.” When the clock hits 11:11. When there’s a shooting star. The last time he had a birthday, he closed his eyes and blew out his candles and imagined Eddie’s face. He has nothing else he wants as badly as he wants to see him. “But I think I did it wrong this time.”

Stan cocks his head to the side. “How so?”

“My wording. I think… I think I somehow… I think…”

Where he’s going with this, he doesn’t know. He can’t remember a thing about his true thought process. He’d just gone to his carving, spruced it up, and thought, _The universe does not get to love only Bill._

And then he’d thought about Eddie, like he always fucking does, and he’d thought… holy _shit,_ he’d thought—

The clubhouse door is ripped clear from its latches. The trunk goes flying and the ground tremors, but nothing shakes more than Richie and Stan as the Teenage Werewolf races up the stairs, inhuman in speed and humanity. It _roars,_ shakes the world, and pauses at the top to stare them down, eyes liquified and hungry.

They do not wait to see what it does.

Stan wraps his fingers around Richie’s wrist and _runs._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs used:
> 
> [Eddie My Love](https://open.spotify.com/track/1uv8FDHMW8p7yUqTF6cDQT?si=jIs61_bfRZeeSJQRyF-HCQ) by The Chordettes
> 
>  _[When Will My Life Begin?](https://open.spotify.com/track/03xWMkKEbeO4SnylA53ipj?si=TMtgV-mJS_WxmUlnvVcw1Q)_ from the _Tangled_ soundtrack as the chapter title


	3. mother knows best

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Losers,” It provides. “You were a bunch of little losers, thinking you could take me on. Do you remember? No one liked you. Not your parents, or the other kids. No friends!”
> 
> “We liked each other,” Eddie finds himself snapping. He doesn’t know who this _we_ is, but he is strong in his conviction. He knows it to be true, him and those awful boys and that dirty, dirty girl. An awful description for the best people he’s ever met. “Didn’t matter that we were losers, just that we had each other.”
> 
> “He is starting to remember!” the clown cheers, delighted. “Do you hear that, ladies and gentlemen? It’s all coming back!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I write a chapter that is too long! Chapter count had to go up because I can't follow an outline to save my life, but here is Eddie, my bebe. 
> 
> Chapter title: [_Mother Knows Best_](https://open.spotify.com/track/1lOSxJNCLvWm2bYaTcTSmK?si=bOAajdAwTBivVTFrPEU9DA), the _Tangled_ soundtrack  
> Song from the tape: [_Time After Time_](https://open.spotify.com/track/7o9uu2GDtVDr9nsR7ZRN73?si=CQ8To-mzTf-hputr162hvw), Cyndi Lauper

_(earlier)_

1

It never really fits in, but it’s there.

It’s _always_ there.

Each dream he has, a balloon appears, though it is never the center of attention, never the star of the show. It hides itself in shadows and corners, folds itself into the scene. It will follow him around, keep the pace, bob in and out of sight almost like a reminder, but it is never the main event.

Until today, that is.

He blinks and he is in his bedroom, stale with dull white walls and ( _forced_ ) lack of personality, and then he is in a dark, never-ending expanse. The dripping sound of water meets his ears, equivalent to that of a leaky faucet, but each drop sounds like an echo, filling the vastness of the space he’s entered.

_Drip,_

_drop._

_Drip,_

_drop._

The darkness surrounds him, presses in on him. It applies a pressure that grounds him, that makes his blood run cold. The skin of his palms grows dry and clammy; he wants to rub them against his thighs, wants to moisturize them, but… but there are no hands. There no arms. There is nothing, just—

The balloon.

The red of it pulses, shifts. Like there is something moving inside, something living, something sliding. Something itching for a way out.

He relates to that, the last one, even if he buries it down, keeps it hidden under lock and key, like many other things about himself. The balloon understands him, floating there innocently, or as innocently as a balloon may float. It doesn’t… it’s not _normal,_ this thing, and it radiates an energy that is too malevolent for comfort, but like Sleeping Beauty to the spindle, he cannot control himself.

It is all about the balloon now when it never has been before and he wants to touch.

An arm moves, skin ghostly white, translucent almost. He can see through it, where the veins and tissue make it up, where the blood flows steadily, a reminder that he is real. The bone there is crooked still, even after all this time, and several of the muscles surrounding it are still torn, evidence that the break itself had not been as clean as one had been led to believe.

He does not need to reach out further to grasp the balloon. It comes to him willingly, as if it were waiting, and the string coils around his wrist, tight enough to remain there but not enough to hurt. He twists his fingers around it, looping it through the digits, and tugs, bringing the inflatable up and down in a bobbing motion, almost like a paddle ball without the wooden racquet.

Up and down, up and down,

up up _up_

down down ( _we all float_ ) _down_ ( _here_ ).

It’s not so bad, the balloon, even though it has no real purpose here. But does _anything_ have a purpose _anywhere?_

Perhaps not.

He feels, very definitively, like he understands much more than he ever has before, much more than he’s ever considered in his short life. This feeling he has—it’s like he knows everything but also nothing. No, that’s wrong: He _is_ everything. He _is_ nothing. He’s every _where._ He’s _no_ where.

He is.

He is not.

He is _All._

How odd it is to a walking conundrum, to be a limbo, if one could _be_ a limbo.

He tugs on the string again. The red of the latex throbs with color, shifting through darks and lights, from ruby and brick to crimson and scarlet to wine and blood, where it settles. Where it stays.

The hues of blood differ, depending on oxygen, and the balloon follows through with that, bright and then dark, blinking like a stoplight in the middle of a deserted street.

It grows closer, the shape of the balloon, until it is all he can see, tinting the strange darkness around them. Whatever it is full of—not air, surely—moves slickly. It coats the inside in a thick layer, weighs it down just enough to have the edge of the knot sit on his closed fist.

It twists as it drops down and he sees a face there—no, a smile, large and enticing, if not a bit menacing. The lips change color as the balloon does, but never deviates from red. As it rotates again, jagged letters form on the skin, deep enough to puncture as they leave a message.

 _IT’S GOOD TO SEE YOU AGAIN,_ it says, and as the invisible pen finishes up on the _N,_ it applies too much pressure.

He hears the _pop!_ before he sees it, a second delay in action, and that sound reverberates through the dark like a gunshot too close to his ears. It drowns out the drip of the water, which he’d all but forgotten about, enthralled as he was in the balloon.

A warm, dense fluid floods over him, drenching his face, his hair, and his front. It’s sticky, whatever it is, and tastes metallic as it slips through his lips, assaults his taste buds.

He gags, spitting it out, letting go of the string, and using his hands to wipe at his mouth. The taste does not leave him, the—he knows what this is, but he doesn’t want to acknowledge it, not in the dark vastness of this place, where nothing exists in tandem with everything and all of it is True.

And especially not when he does not know whose it is, or if it is contaminated. Think of the _germs,_ all of them in his face, and his eyes, and his mouth. Think of the _infection._

He scrambles to wipe it off, but it sticks, clutching to his pores and his tongue like a lifeline, and the heaviness of the balloon returns, despite its being popped. The latex rises, filling slowly, the rupture stitching itself back up, and as he spits and dry heaves, the string slithers down his throat as if being pulled by an invisible hand.

He claws at the balloon, surely too big to fit in his mouth, but cannot grab hold, even with his nails, and it changes shape, shrinking to lodge itself right in his esophagus. It is a slow, damning torture as it inches its way down. He is unable to cough around it, unable to fit his hand in his mouth to pull it out, and he slams fist after fist against his chest, searching for air, for oxygen, for release.

He is dizzy. He is choking. He is looking forward in the black, vision going in and out of focus, temperature climbing, and sees, for the first time, that he has not been alone here.

A spider, a large, large spider, scuttles out of the—out of _somewhere, anywhere, everywhere_ —and comes to a stop before him. It is hairy and terrifying, somehow more so than the suffocation he’s currently experiencing, and its eyes are cartoonish in size as they gaze up at him.

He coughs.

The balloon continues its slow descent.

The spider gurgles at him, opening its mouth in what _has_ to be an attempt to mock him, black goo spilling from its maw. It is a different color from the darkness that envelops them, so he is able to see it, crystallizing like ice as it hits the ground.

Around it, the spider says _I’VE MISSED YOU._ The words ricochet, like perhaps they are in a room and not a vast emptiness.

The balloon is pulled from his throat, a singular relief, even as it blooms and blossoms in his chest cavity, right behind his ribs. He takes short, gasping breaths, trying to accommodate for the lack of oxygen that’s making him see stars in the backs of his eyes.

 _YOU CANNOT ESCAPE ME,_ the spider continues. It moves closer, crushing the goo beneath its long, heavy legs. _I AM INEVITABLE._

He rasps in reply, trying to find the words, trying to say anything. Inevitability as a concept is misinformed. Many things are inevitable. Perhaps everything is inevitable, as life is out of our control. He’s got a number of things he could say, philosophical and not, but what emerges, weak and thin, is “ _Fuck off._ ”

Can a spider smirk? This one does.

The balloon expands, becomes the size of the thing it inhabits, and he feels the pressure on his bones, on his organs. The strain there, as they try to fight back into their places, but a balloon is strong, it seems.

It explodes again, this time inside him, the size of his body, and once again there is Nothing. There is Everything. There is All.

_SEE YOU SOON._

2

The clock on Eddie’s nightstand changes from 2:59 to 3:00, big, bright numbers, as Eddie shoots up, clawing at his throat. His face is wet with tears, his body is shaking, and his feet get caught up in his blankets, twisted at the ankles.

His body is nothing but a vibration, tremors running up and down his spine. He doesn’t remember how to breathe, doesn’t remember what it feels like to have unobstructed use of his lungs, and he pitches over the side of his bed, gagging and choking until he vomits.

It’s a loud affair. He thinks he may be screaming as he empties the contents of his stomach all over the ugly shag rug his mother picked out, one of her recent attempts to rid the house of dust and other allergens.

He coughs, and he coughs, and he coughs, inhaling too hard and too sharp, trying to find the perfect balance. Trying to find his breath. A shrill whistle is all he gets, high and intense, and he thinks maybe that’s also his shrieking when he catches sight of the mess he’s made on his floor.

The rug is white, right, because of course it is.

And because the rug is white, Eddie’s thrown up blood, because of course he has.

He tumbles out of bed this time, landing with a thud on the floor, right next to the sharp tang of bile. Eddie’s forehead narrowly misses the edge of his nightstand, but his knee does not escape the pain of hitting the ground.

Eddie lays there, groaning and crying and hyperventilating, and the lights flip on. The brightness burns his eyes so badly he squeezes them shut, but behind his lids he sees _IT’S GOOD TO SEE YOU AGAIN_ so he opens them. Lets the light from his ceiling fan disorient him further.

“Edward, what in the name—”

He wheezes, rolls his eyes up to look at her, and waits for the inevitable berating. He may be incapacitated now, but he can picture it even still. _Edward, what have you done? I told you not to eat too much at dinner and here we are, are you having a reaction? I knew you were allergic to fish, but you insisted… see what happens when you don’t listen to your mother?_ It’s all the same. It’s always the same.

Eddie is the worst. Sonia is the best.

He is a disappointment, probably. A problem to fix, most definitely.

“Use your inhaler and get up,” his mother orders. “When was the last time you cleaned this room? There is bound to be _filth_ on these floors. You’re so messy.”

He isn’t, but okay.

“Sorry,” he forces out, throat sore. It feels like it’s been shredded to pieces. “I didn’t mean to… I’ll clean it up.”

Sonia blinks at him, looking more like she’s been inconvenienced than concerned. “Of course you will,” she says. She runs a finger along his dresser, inspects the pad. “The amount of dust _alone_ …”

“No, I meant—” Eddie fumbles here and throws his arm out, accidentally palming the mess at his side. He pulls back, disgusted, and stares at his hand. It may have come out of his own body, but it’s still gross. “I meant this,” he says, waving it up at her. “I’ll clean it.”

“Your hands? Eddie-bear, have you not been washing your hands regularly?”

“What? No,” he croaks. “I wash my hands all the time, Ma. I meant the blood. I’ll clean it up. I’m just having a hard time right now, just give me a minute.”

This time Sonia comes closer, looming over him like a villain in a comic, big and terrifying. She still has rollers in her hair. “What blood, Eddie?” she asks, slow and soft, like he is something that cannot be spooked.

“The blood,” he repeats, and he gestures to—to where she’s standing, bare feet and all. “You’re… you’re standing in it. The blood. The vomit.”

He coughs. He can still taste it, the acidic burn. His throat hurts.

“Eddie-bear,” she says, tenderness tinged with venom, “there is none of that.” She squats down, a feat for her, and presses the back of her hand to his forehead. “Are you feeling well?”

Eddie often does not like to be touched, especially by her, but he chases the warmth, wishing she’d keep holding him, keep grounding him to the situation. To reality. He _doesn’t_ feel well, but not in the way she thinks.

He’s the picture of health, but he’s frightened.

He doesn’t answer. She tuts away, sliding her hand down to his cheeks and then his neck, feeling the warmth of his skin. “Feverish,” she deduces, standing back up.

“ _No,_ ” Eddie yelps, lifting his neck to follow her retreating fingers. _Please,_ he thinks desperately, and he’s never once thought like this, not even when he was six and he’d skinned his knees outside.

“I am just getting you medicine,” Sonia tells him, nose wrinkling at his behavior.

He watches her go, still flat on his back, neck craned. She leaves a trail of one bloody footprint in her wake. Surely she _must_ see that. _Surely._

But she doesn’t even spare the rug a second glance, even as Eddie fumbles with the pills. She doesn’t see it. Perhaps she’s going blind. She’s old enough probably, and she spends all her fucking time staring at a television screen, so—

“What is this?” he asks.

“One for the fever, one for the nausea, and another for the aches you’ll surely have from falling off the bed,” she recites, giving enough information to throw him through a loop.

“Okay, but what are they?” Eddie likes to know these things.

She repeats herself, grabs his half-full glass of water from the nightstand, hands it to him.

They all look the same, which makes Eddie a little weary, but he pops them in his mouth and swallows. He knows better than to make a scene, and there are more important things to worry about.

Her inability to see the blood, for one.

And the way her answering grin looks just like the one painted on the balloon in his dream, for another.

3

Eddie stares at his mother, searching her face for any sign of—awareness, he guesses, and finds none. He’s been officially awake for almost five hours, has been at her beck and call all morning, and not once has she asked him how he’s feeling. How he’s doing. She has not even trudged back upstairs to see if he’s cleaned up the mess he made. Hasn’t acknowledged it in the slightest.

He frowns and chomps down on a raw carrot so vigorously he’s surprised he hasn’t broken any of his teeth. His eyes roam the planes of her face, the pink of her cheeks, the flicker of her gaze, but there is nothing there. She is blank. Empty.

 _Typical,_ he thinks. If she is medicating him, she is also medicating herself. That’s how it works. He wonders what she thinks she has this time. Last month, she had acute back pain.

He continues to aggressively eat his snack, the crack of the carrot breaking apart the harsh sound in the stifling silence surrounding him. He chews with his mouth open. She does not notice—then again, she does not notice much of anything—content to peruse the newspaper before her like the half-assed reporting of those missing kids is something inherently interesting. Eddie doesn’t have to look to see the headline, those of weeks previous flooding his brain.

_Body part found in the Penobscot does not belong to any of Derry’s missing children. Derry High’s physical education teacher taken into questioning. Police Chief assures they are doing all they can as number of missing children jumps into double digits. Muellers report daughter, 17, has been missing for two months._

The headlines are awful, but there is nothing of substance in any of the articles, even if his mother doesn’t let him read them and he has to wait to nose around the garbage to get even a _shred_ of news. _If_ you could call the Derry _News_ that, and you can’t.

Eddie finds it very hard to believe the people here do not want to know more about their kids, seemingly disappearing at random, and if he had access to the public library, he’d do some more digging, really get to the nitty gritty of it all.

Because look: It all seems very familiar, even if it makes him uncomfortable. When he manages to read the words on the pages she’s hidden from him, seeds of fear root in his belly and he begins to understand the insistence she has that he stay inside. Doesn’t mean he necessarily agrees with it—and he doesn’t; he’s so incredibly bored—but he _gets it._

The reporting is shit, and there is an underlying sense of indifference to the stories, and the people at the _News_ and the ones they’re talking to… they all seem… _resigned_ to it. To the disappearances. They’re not surprised.

It’s almost like this has happened before, or that it’s happened often enough that the magic, mystical disappearing act of handfuls of _children_ isn’t newsworthy, or important enough to worry about.

That sets Eddie on edge, has tendrils of… of something (memory) curling around the edges of his brain. He doesn’t know much about it, just what he’s managed to glean off of stained front pages, but he knows enough to be wary. Nervous. He knows to avoid certain parts of town and always has a very stupid fear of bathroom drains despite never having left the safety of his home.

And that should be enough for him, but it’s not.

He wants to ask his mother more about it, but any time he expresses an interest in the outside world, she shuts him down. He doesn’t know what possesses him to ask now, but the prodding sense of urgency inside him has him blurting, “Anything interesting?”

Eddie eats another carrot as he waits, slower this time.

Sonia hums a little, scanning the pages. The real answer to his question is _nothing,_ but she’ll be damned if she doesn’t find something to tell him.

“Steelers beat the Bills, twenty three-zero,” she says, like that is something Eddie _You Can’t Run, Jump, Climb, Bike, Do Sit Ups_ Kaspbrak is interested in.

“Cool.”

“A cold front is coming up the coast,” she continues. She sniffs. “Make sure that window of yours is closed and locked, I don’t know why you insist on leaving it open. I don’t want you to get pneumonia again.”

It was a simple case of the flu, but whatever. He says, “Yeah, sure,” even though he knows he won’t. Something’s been keeping him from locking it for years, like he’s waiting for something.

( _Someone._ )

“Freese’s is having a pre-Thanksgiving sale,” she says idly, in a way that makes it sound as if they’d actually _go,_ and maybe she would but Eddie’d stay here, like he always does. “President Clinton agreed to sell a supercomputer to China. I can’t imagine _why_ he’d do that, it just gives them more power, and we don’t need _that_ right now, no—”

Eddie ignores her with a very blatant eye roll, snapping another carrot in half to drown out her political ramblings. They are never interesting, and they are almost always incredibly wrong, which he knows, even as a person with no real opinions on any matter. He almost always disagrees with her—on principle and because maybe he’s lying a little when he says he has no opinions.

But enough about that.

He lets her prattle on, nodding where applicable, but his focus is on the front of the _News._ A school photo sits side by side with what looks like a crime scene, a dark puddle of blood trailing the length of a walkway and leading out into a street. Into a street that looks…

It’s…

Does that…?

What is…?

He _knows_ that street. He can feel it deep in his bones. He’s walked down it, run down it, biked down it. He’s _been_ there. But how?

Eddie leans forward, trying to see better—not the boy, five years old and grinning out at them—but his surroundings. Where he lives. Trees line the length of street, dying or dead already, and Eddie has the oddest sensation of knowing the complete distance from Derry Middle School to this street block. Knows how long it takes from there to the Barrens, knows where The House is, even if he doesn’t know what that means.

He digs his elbows into the table, squinting at the page, and in his singular focus, knocks into his glass of milk (untouched, because it makes him nauseous). It tips over, sending a white rushing stream of liquid down the table to his mother’s sleeve.

“ _Fuck!_ ” he yelps, leaping up to toss napkins in the way. They soak through, but that does not stop the milk from getting to its final destination.

Sonia watches this all happen and does not react, allowing the liquid to stain and soak her sweater. “Language, Edward,” she reprimands, looking up at him from beneath glasses that make her all the more frightening. She accepts the ball of napkins from him, pressing them to her shirt. “You’ve always been incredibly clumsy.”

Okay, not _always._

“Sorry,” he says instead, knowing she’ll make him hand wash that to perfection before the night is done. “It was just… _I_ was just…” And he shouldn’t do it. He shouldn’t, but the words leave his mouth on his own accord, spilling out of him. “Where is that? What street?” He points at the picture of the boy, of Devin, or Donovan, or Derek. He can’t see the fine print from here.

He can see, though, the crooked bowtie, patterned, and the missing teeth in the front of his mouth. His hair is slicked, but a muss of curls have snuck through the gel to coil around his ears. The style is oddly familiar, but not as much as the _street._ The street that—

( _He swerves around a pothole, not too keen to catapult into a half-assed flip like someone in front of him, and careens into another body at this side, this one long and lanky and tremendously tall, and the two of them tumble to the ground. Hands that will grow bigger in time wrap around his wrists as they fall into each other, a giggling, flushing mess._ )

Sonia glances at the front page, purses her lips, and folds the paper in half. “Don’t worry about it,” she says, coolly. She goes back to her dinner, a plate of microwaved shit Eddie hates eating, full of radiation, no doubt, and an astronomical amount of salt.

“I’m not worried,” Eddie says, “I’m just… I’m…”

He reaches out to take the _News,_ even though she doesn’t let him read it—and she doesn’t now, pulling it away from him like he’s struggling to reach the highest shelf of the cabinet. He refrains from sighing, flaring his nostrils, and focuses on what he knows—or what he _thinks_ he knows, and it’s that street. That _house,_ even.

And it’s odd that he has such a reaction to it when he hasn’t left his house save for family trips to his aunt’s in Portland. The last time he’d stepped foot in Derry, like _truly_ in Derry, he’d ended up with an arm broken so severely it’d been reset on four separate occasions and under the fog of medications he most likely didn’t need.

There are memories, though, of this street. Of _people_ on this street. Memories that fill him up like the fear had in his dream, prodding at a part of his brain that’s kept things hidden under lock and key. They’re _there,_ proving he’s alive, not some hallucination or his mother’s imaginary friend, but they’re foggy at best.

Eddie fears it’s some sort of head injury, a clot in his brain that’s intercepted the receptors to his long-term memory. He remembers falling from one floor to the next, landing hard on his spine, slamming the back of his head so hard against dirty linoleum he passed out. It could mean something, the forgetfulness; it could lead from that, but he has no real way to tell his caretakers how he managed a fall like that, nor can he explain why he was where he was—mainly because he doesn’t remember where that was.

His mother claims it’s a side effect of the medicine, probably, it’s always a side effect of the medication, but she won’t have the doctor change the prescription. What’s worse is the doctors don’t listen to _him,_ the person this is happening to, fearful of Sonia Kaspbrak’s wrath. The nurses do, though, women with nice, safe smiles and men his mother scoffs at— _that can’t be his real job, is it? It’s such a… feminine thing to do_ —and they tried to wean him off the stuff, slow and steady. Unfortunately the withdrawal at home was too much to bear, vomiting steadily into the toilet and trembling in the shower, so his mother got the good nurses taken from his case, replaced with ones that act just like her, and he’d been put right back on whatever it was he’d been taking. He still doesn’t even know, even to this day. 

Discontent at being unable to control his own life, whether it be food choices, hobbies, or the way he fucking sneezes, has Eddie reaching out again, fingers curling around the edge of the paper. It slits a cut into his finger as she snatches it away, which smarts. She lays her own palm over the bundle as well as his knuckles, which is—and this is _awful,_ right?

Her touch is cold and clammy, slick and dead like a fish in a market, and Eddie has never liked it, not even as a child. He’d cried— _wailed_ —when she held him, calling out for anyone else, and that has made him feel increasingly guilty. It’s his _mother,_ and he doesn’t want her to touch him.

And that was even before the situation this morning, where she seemed almost annoyed that she was woken to his post-nightmare wails. Before her lack of sight, her inability to see the blood he’d ejected from his body, scraping up his throat. He’s still not sure she saw the vomit, and that was one hundred percent real.

It’s just… she makes him feel…

Inconsequential. Unimportant.

Dirty, almost.

Is he allowed to say that about his mother?

( _Yes, Eddie, you are allowed to dislike her. There is no rule against it._ )

He frowns. ( _Who said that?_ ) 

Silence, but a knowing one, which is broken by his mother’s voice. “I know it’s scary,” she says, pout prominent and loud, “all these missing children. It’s a real tragedy, really it is, but if you stay in the house, you’ll be fine. You know that, right? You’ll be fine if you listen to Mommy, Eddie-bear.”

He’s hardly frightened, not by this, but he says, loyally, “Of course. Yes. I just… where _is_ that?”

He knows it, he knows it, he knows it.

“Somewhere around here,” she answers. “Nothing to fuss over, truly. A shame that this boy is missing, but the reporters should really think twice about what they throw on the front. Such gruesome pictures and stories… it’s like they have no common decency. People are so— _you’re_ so delicate, Eddie, and it’s frazzled you so. I should send in a complaint just for upsetting your sensibilities.”

“I’m not…” Eddie makes a face, screwing up his mouth like he’s eaten a lemon slice, acid and all. “I’m not _frazzled,_ ” he argues. “It’s just. It’s _sad,_ yes, I agree, and I hope they find him and everyone else—”

She interrupts to say “Unlikely” which makes Eddie’s stomach churn. Makes him wonder what it’d be like to go missing forever, never to be found. Forgotten by all.

He falls down that rabbit hole, anxiety twisting at his vertebrae, and drops the subject at hand (the street and the house and a vague recollection of a tire swing?). He blurts instead, “What do you mean _unlikely?_ Ma, that’s a terrible thing to say!”

She didn’t see the blood, and she doesn’t care about the missing children.

“They’ve been reporting cases for months now,” she says slowly, like she doesn’t want to, and the downturn of her mouth implies she really doesn’t, so why is she? “They haven’t found a single one, we would _know_ if they did, and so it’s a lost cause, even announcing another one like this. They say after seventy-two hours it is more likely they are already dead, the missing person, or gone farther than we can look.”

Eddie grips the edge of the table, knuckles white with effort, with fear, with horror. His face drains of all color, not like there was much there to begin with, and the handful of carrots he rebelliously chewed begin their slow ascent back up and out of his body. He swallows down, past the metallic taste, and murmurs, “You’re saying all those—you’re saying they’re all—”

He can’t say it.

“Dead,” she provides, and Eddie presses a fist to his mouth. His body convulses like he’s going to really throw up, but he fights it, slumping in his seat. _All those kids, dead. All ten. Twenty. How many?_ “It’s very likely,” his mother continues, “and that boy is already gone too, probably.” She taps a meaty finger to his face, right by the nose, smears sauce over his freckles. Eddie sees it as blood, leaking from his nostrils, his eyes, coating him. “It’s just a formality, putting this information in the papers, as uncouth as it is. It is merely a way to appease the parents, prove to them something is going on. There is not going to be a new police investigation; they’ll just add him to the pile of others and not find a single kid.”

She sighs, faking devastation, and squeezes his fingers, even as he tries to wriggle out of her hold. God, she’s so cold. So… is inhuman an appropriate word? If the devil were on Earth right this second, Eddie’d be convinced it was her.

Which… outrageous, right?

( _She’s not the devil, Eddie-bear. There is something worse out there, and it is not your mother. She is just an abnormal amount of abusive, evil and manipulative._ )

“You _must_ see why I insist you stay indoors now, right?” she asks as if he’s not inspecting her for horns and glowing black eyes. “It’s an awful world out there, Eddie-bear, filled with even worse people, and I’d hate for you to get hurt.”

“Not like I’m not getting hurt here,” he mutters, snatching his hands away. He twists them in his lap, ears burning, worried she’d heard him.

It _is_ a horrible world out there, he’ll give her that. Kids are going missing, kids are _dying,_ and Eddie’s last, vivid memory is a broken arm he doesn’t want to repeat. But the resurgence of these disappearances, and the picture of that small boy, oblivious and ill-prepared, still relying on adults to help him—it sparks something in Eddie he hadn’t felt in some time.

A purpose, perhaps.

He remembers something, a boy he’d known since infancy, who’d liked his older brother and playing games and creating blanket forts in the middle of living rooms. Something happened to that boy, just as something is happening to Derek-Devin-Donovan on a street Eddie remembers but doesn’t.

His arm aches at the thought. Stings, from elbow to wrist and then all the way up to the shoulder. He rubs at it, soft against the skin, careful to keep the pressure light, but he still grits his teeth, trying to breathe through it. He hasn’t _hurt_ it exactly, just irritated it, and he does that sometimes, when he brushes his teeth or puts on a shirt. When he rolls over in his sleep or attempts to play the neglected piano in the living room.

He’s never been good at hiding it though, and so his mother always knows.

“Have you taken your medicine?” she asks, eyes roaming the length of his arm, like she can see through the long sleeve to the pieces that make him up. It reminds him of the translucent look of it in his dream, where he saw all the places he’d torn and cracked.

His arm will never be the same. An awful thought, something he hates to consider, but true, nonetheless. He’s got one that works and the other that lays there, lame and pointless, irritated by everything.

“No,” he answers. “I wanted to eat first.”

Sonia gets up anyway despite knowing how Eddie feels about taking meds on an empty stomach—a handful of carrots doesn’t count—and rifles through the cabinet behind them, searching for the bottle of oxycodone she’s filled and refilled and refilled again. She keeps his prescriptions on the top shelf above the sink, where he can’t reach, because he tried to hide them from her once, and flushed them down the toilet the other time, and kept them pressed beneath his tongue recently.

She does not trust him, and he does not trust her, and they are at a standstill you can only find in an old Western. Eyes squinted, sun blazing, pistols pointed. No one makes the first move, no one wants to cause conflict, and so it is Eddie who caves.

He watches her shake out two ( _one too many_ ) pills and holds out her palm. The white of the medicine is such a stark contrast to the tannish color of her skin; she’s allowed outside, even if he is not. She is a hypocrite.

“You ache more when it rains,” she says. There is no rain in the forecast, but Eddie knows he also aches more in the cold, and there’s something coming this way. “It’ll be okay. We can take a break from school today, if you’d like.”

“But that means you’ll make me take classes Saturday,” Eddie whines.

“Your health and comfort are more important,” Sonia reminds him, like she does every time. It’s a surprise he’s not even farther behind than he already is. Having his mother as his teacher is singlehandedly the worst thing that’s ever happened to him, but in perfect Sonia Kaspbrak fashion, she trusts no one but herself, not even the highly lauded tutor from Bangor.

Eddie allows himself a moment to stare, to weigh the pros and cons. The list isn’t very long on either side, but the pros vastly win out in the end. Number one, at the top: _Get away from Mom._ He’d do anything and everything to be rid of her beady gaze, always staring, always cataloging, waiting for him to express some sort of discomfort she can remedy.

He slowly closes his fingers around them, brushing her skin, and pops them into his mouth. He _does_ hate how they make him feel when he doesn’t eat enough, but…

There are good things that can come from this. He’s eager for them to appear—the weightlessness, the _freedom._ The _voice_ , in particular.

Eddie hates the way her validation makes him feel, sending a thrill down his spine at her pleased smile, which he copies a little uncomfortably.

“Good boy,” she says when he opens his mouth to show her he’s swallowed.

 _Mama’s boy_ is what she really means. She is not wrong.

4

He gets dizzy mid-bite, spilling reheated mashed potatoes down the front of his shirt, and thinks maybe he warbles something at his mother before hastily getting to his feet. He hates how he feels when he takes his medicine like this, hates that his mom _makes him,_ and he topples his chair over in his insistence to get away. 

His stomach roils, and he has a heightened awareness of his ear, red and throbbing. He listens to her tell him to take ice packs for his arm and a hot water bottle for his neck—which doesn’t hurt, but okay?—and she presses a hot mug of tea he doesn’t want into his hands. He worries he’ll drop it all, tripping up the stairs, but he makes it to his bedroom, where he deposits them all on his desk.

He, himself, drops onto his back, his mattress groaning to accommodate his weight, and he stares at the ceiling, focusing on the glow in the dark stars he’s got stuck there. He’s sixteen—no, he’s seventeen tomorrow. He wonders if he’s too old to still have those up.

They seem to blink down at him. _Yes,_ they say.

Eddie presses his palms behind him, balance incredibly off, and pushes himself up to begin the process of taking them down. He is practically an adult; he doesn’t need miniature night lights on his fucking _ceiling._

His mind races, nails digging into plaster and adhesive. One by one the stars fall, landing in heaps on his comforter, and though the sun still shines behind the half-closed curtains at Eddie’s window, the room stifles with darkness. Eddie hates the dark, the way things curl and grow and manifest in shadows, and as he plucks at his ceiling, he feels the oppressive pull of it all.

He was somewhere dark once, so very, very dark. It’d been scary, he remembers. His arm does, too, throbbing despite the strong meds his mom is having him trip on, and now that he’s thought of his mother, still downstairs, still not caring about him, her voice reverberates in his mind. _Unlikely, unlikely, unlikely._

The boy with the missing tooth.

The other one, from his past, maybe.

Both gone one day. Gone forever.

And they aren’t the only ones. There are others. Children. Twenty of them, if the papers are to be believed.

( _They’re not. There’s more. So many more._ )

All missing. All gone for longer than three days. Dead, he guesses, if his mother isn’t a liar.

( _She is, but not about this._ )

And no one cares! No one is doing _anything._ Eddie breaks his thumbnail, hardly feeling the pain. There are no search parties, he focuses on instead, no increase in police activity. And he knows this because he reads the papers in the garbage and plays the radio when his mom’s in the shower.

There’s only a… there’s a _curfew._ Seven in the evening. Everyone has to be home by then, adults and children alike, but anyone under, like, eighteen should be escorted here and there and everywhere, accompanied by someone older, as if that would help with the disappearances. It’s like they haven’t noted the rise in missing adults, it seems. Nothing will stop whatever this is from taking _both_ of them.

It’s not safe for kids, the paper says, the radio host says. But it’s also not safe for _anyone._

 _No one is safe,_ he thinks, and maybe he hates being locked up here with only his mother for company and nothing that really… is _his,_ who he is as a person, but it’s for the best. Maybe. Whatever is out here, it might get him, and that’s… that’s…

( _I can still get you, doesn’t matter where you are._ )

Eddie sucks his thumb into his mouth. There’s the tang of blood there, his nail ripped down the middle, digging into his flesh, and he laps at it, stopping the tiny flow.

He feels like… _he feels like…_

Why does he feel like he’s been there before? Like whatever that thing is—it’s almost gotten him? And he can… he can see—

A smile, large and red and toothy.

A face, familiar in its makeup, something you’d see at—at—

Eddie _wheezes,_ so close to the truth he can feel it, and he bites down on his ragged nail, his lungs constricting but not expanding. He fumbles, thinking too hard and too much, dizzy with codeine and knowledge, and loses his footing, falling to his mattress, knees splayed. His tailbone aches.

There is a cough, and then another one, and then another one, and tears gather at the corners of Eddie’s eyes. He slaps his hand to his chest, trying to dislodge whatever is keeping him from breathing correctly.

It is like the balloon he dreamt of never left his body, being filled slowly with helium, pushing his organs out and away, cracking his bones. He can’t breathe, is the thing, and it’s the thought of—

( _The colors white, orange, and red, humorous yet horrifying._ )

His throat all but blocks up, keeping him from helping himself, and he sees his inhaler, lying innocuously on his nightstand, calling to him— _Eddie, Eddie,_ it says, but he ignores it. Will always ignore it, no matter how bad his breathing gets. He hates the filmy way the spray coats his throat, hates how it leaves a bad taste in his mouth, so he continues to struggle through his attack, limbs going limp as he presses his forehead into his comforter.

 _In and out, Eds,_ he thinks, but here’s the thing: That’s not _his_ voice.

And here’s the other thing: The voice makes his stomach does this… this flipping thing. It _warms._ It’s one of the reasons why he takes those godawful pills, just to hear this. He listens to it, breathes through his nose and out through his mouth, the soft and smooth timbre of the voice already beginning to ease his anxiety.

He doesn’t mind too much that he’s called Eds, either. Maybe if it happened in real life he’d put up a little bit more of a fight, but in his head, it feels like… it feels like he’s finally _connected_ to someone. Like someone genuinely likes him enough to call him a nickname, like someone _wants_ to be his friend.

Then again, anything is better than _Eddie-bear._

( _That’s not it, Eds._ )

The voice repeats itself, instructs him to breathe in and out, and Eddie listens.

There’s less pain, more of an irritating rattle, and Eddie’s mind clears for but a moment. Enough for the voice to say _Don’t think about the kids, or the dark, or the cl—_ and the last word is interrupted, drowned out by _Think about me instead._

Eddie hacks out a cough. _I can’t,_ he thinks back. _I don’t know you. How can I think of you if I don’t know you?_

It’s silent, just Eddie whistling like a goddamn teakettle, and then it’s back with a very brief moment of loud, all-encompassing hesitation. _You do know me._

 _I don’t know anyone,_ Eddie argues. _This is happening in my head._

 _Yeah,_ they answer, _but that doesn’t mean you don’t know me. That doesn’t mean it’s not working._

 _What do you mean,_ Eddie begins, rip-roaring and ready to go, a defensive quip on the tip of his—not his tongue, but his mind. Maybe? But he stops, realizes he can breathe now, slow and shallow, but properly all the same. He lifts his head, forehead leaving a sweaty stain on his comforter, and wipes his hand over his face, skin clammy and flushed with heat at his cheeks. _Oh._

 _Oh,_ the voice repeats, smug. _You’re welcome._

 _I don’t remember thanking you,_ Eddie replies snarkily, smacking his lips. His mouth is dry. He’s lightheaded, just a bit.

The voice—his friend—laughs, and the echo of it has Eddie curling his toes, has his heart triple beating in his chest, hard where it shouldn’t be, given his previous inability to breathe correctly. He wants to hear it again, the laugh; it’s a nice sound. A welcome sound. He just doesn’t know how to make it happen.

He mulls it over, laying back again, body contorted oddly. _I know you,_ he thinks back to it, hoping it hasn’t left. He doesn’t know if he should present it as a statement or a question.

It feels more like the former.

He receives a soft answer, and that warms him significantly. _You do,_ it says, _and don’t worry, Eds, you’ll know me again._

It’s all he can do to think _Okay,_ hope swirling traitorously in his belly.

It leaves after that, and Eddie wonders about it—about knowing someone but not and has never hated his lack of memory more. Some days he feels like he knows nothing about himself, just this house and his mother and his medications. Others, he feels like maybe he’d been someone before this, someone who’d had a person like this voice. Someone important to him, someone he’d loved and would die for. And because _he_ felt that way about _them,_ they felt the same towards him, and there were others. A few more. Five, maybe. Six, at most.

They loved him, these people, never made him feel like a nuisance or a problem to fix or… or… anything he felt now. He just _was,_ and they just _were,_ and no one asked him or them for anything other than that.

He wonders what happened to them, those ( _Losers_ ) people of his. He has vague recollections of them, of feeling content, even happy with them. With who _he_ was, and that’s because of them, he thinks, whoever they are. He hopes they’re the same, making someone else feel a little bit better about themselves, just as they did with Eddie.

And they did, didn’t they? They made him better. Made him a little bit of who he is right now, today, even if he doesn’t remember them besides this voice that comes in and out only when he is half-lucid.

Eddie twists in his bed, sniffing, and rolls over to crawl to his nightstand. His radio rests there, antenna up, ready for use. He makes sure the volume is on low, doesn’t want his mom to hear and cause a fucking scene, and cycles though the small mess of tapes he has at its side until he finds the right one.

It’s pretty beat up at this point, having been played over and over. Eddie is not ashamed to admit he often puts it on daily, sometimes even hiding the radio under the covers with him on nights he particularly can’t get to sleep, pillowed by his head like there’s another person there with him.

It calms him, this tape. It reminds him of things he has no real memory of, but it’s nice, the nostalgia. It has him feeling like there was something _worth_ missing in his life at some point, even if he’ll never figure out what it is.

He rewinds it, gaze flicking over the playlist despite his having it memorized for years, and presses his finger down to start it up.

He can see the white piece of tape even as it starts to play the first song, the words _TRASHMOUTH RECORDS_ scribbled over it in handwriting that is trying so hard to be neat but isn’t. It’s the only part of the thing that hasn’t been withered away by age or use. Pristine, like it’d only been yesterday that it’d been written.

Eddie consciously listens to the first three songs and falls asleep to—

 _If you’re lost, you can look and you will find me  
_ _Time after time  
_ _If you fall, I will catch you, I will be waiting  
_ _Time after time_

5

He dreams he’s in a house.

It is not his, but it possesses the same oppressive feel. He’s not sure what that’s supposed to mean and he’s not too keen to figure that out, so he doesn’t dwell on it. He merely knows he is uncomfortable here, but that’s not something he’s not used to, so he shifts the fanny pack on his hips, jingling with pill bottles he has to take when his watch alarm goes off.

He does not fit in here, or in his own skin. He needs to find a way out.

_Edddddieeeeeeeeee…_

He twists on his heel, eyes squinted, peering, looking. The whisper travels, echoes, beckons, and he follows the sound of it as if it’s an arrow, neon and pointing him where he needs to go. He hurries down an aged hall, wallpaper peeling at corners and faded where sunlight has consistently hit it. It is not lit except for a blinking bulb in the middle, strung up too high for him to reach.

A door slams shut somewhere behind him, making his heart leap into his throat. He is alone now, he knows that. It is a certainty, where before, when the door was open, he wasn’t, even though he hadn’t known a door was there before it closed. All of that does not stop him from continuing on, though; he knows his friends will find him. They would not leave him here.

_Will they find you now, Eddie-bear? Do they know where you are? Have they not already left you?_

That alarm goes off, two consecutive beeps, loud and jarring in the relative silence. Eddie fumbles to turn it off, only to find he isn’t exactly wearing a watch. It feels like he is, but it’s not there, not tangible. He pinches skin in his quest to shut the thing off.

He hasn’t needed one since his forced isolation. His mother knows when he needs to take his next round of pills, has never let him miss it. There’s almost always a working clock in every room of their house.

The beeping continues. He can’t get it to stop.

A hand grabs his shoulder, shaking him roughly, pulling him around. Eddie follows the movement, digging his heels into the ground to keep from falling, and looks to his left. No one is there, not even the fingers that clutched him.

He sighs, annoyed. “That’s not funny, Ric—” he starts, the name of Someone Important on the tip of his tongue, a _memory_ there, which he loses when he gets a real look at what’s behind him.

He chokes on the _HIE_ of the name he does not remember, gazing up at the dead-eyed face of a leper. A leper who has his fucking _hands_ pressed to Eddie’s skin, where his shirt collar slips down his shoulder.

They’re mutilated, they are, holding him in place. Boils, scabs, and open wounds cover the digits, drawing a messy trail up its arm, hiding beneath its own sleeve until they reappear at its neck. Large lumps of disease reside there, pink and red and inflamed, leaking pus. There are questionable stains on the front of the shirt—blood, discharge, sweat—and Eddie stares there instead of at the face, where one eye droops lower than the other, following the decay of the skin.

It says his name, a long drone.

Eddie makes the mistake of looking up.

It has no nose, just a gaping hole where one would be, flaps of blackened flesh shifting with each labored breath it takes. The mouth below it opens, taking in greedy, generous bouts of air, and closes, looking like a fish out of water. Acting like one, too. Saliva drips down one side of its downturned lip, dangling from the chin.

Eddie inhales sharply and shuffles back, snatching his body parts away to keep from getting splashed. The drool drops and lands right where Eddie’s foot had been, and that is when Eddie realizes he is not wearing shoes in this diseased-ridden place, just the socks he’d fallen asleep in, white ones with a band of pink at his toes.

What the _fuck._

The leper holds out a hand, joints creaking, a knuckle twisted the wrong way. “Alarm went off,” it says. “Time to take this.”

Eddie stares at the pill, long and white, trying to pretend he doesn’t see the dirt amassed between the lines of the leper’s palm. “Uh,” he tries, stumbling back again, “I’m not _actually_ wearing a watch, so I don’t think… I’m not sure it’s the right time? Maybe I’ll just… I don’t need it now, maybe.”

“You don’t want to get any sicker than you already are, Eddie,” the leper warns. “You don’t want to end up like _me,_ do you?”

“No,” Eddie breathes out on a gasp, tripping over a lump behind him and sprawling to the ground. The rug beneath him is damp, soaking into the seat of his shorts. The feel of it against his bare legs makes his skin crawl; he shifts quickly, forcing his knees up. He can’t shake the squelch though, how he can imagine himself sitting in decades of gross (grey) water, this rug saturated with, like, _piss and shit—_

The leper ignores his issues, even goes so far as to bend down to offer up his hand again. The pills have multiplied, all ones he used to take—small and big, long and short, white and pink.

Eddie shakes his head, pushes himself back and away, shuddering as his fingers sink into the carpet. “I don’t need them,” he insists. “I’m fine. I don’t… I don’t… those aren’t mine, they’re yours.”

“Be careful here,” the leper says, following, marching like a frog. Eddie continues to clamor back until his hand falls through a hole, dangling. The lack of ground makes his stomach drop, the knowledge he could fall right through to who knows where making his mouth taste of pennies. “You don’t know what’s on the floor here. You don’t know what you’re touching. Why are you on the ground, Eddie-bear?”

His jaw unlatches on its own accord, vocal cords wrestling a scream from the deepest parts of him, as he watches this disgusting, gross thing merge into his _mother._ It expands to accommodate her form, filling out into Sonia Kaspbrak, but keeping everything else. Her cheeks, heavily made up with rouge just to sit in the house, all but melt from the bone of her skull, and her rollers fall from her head, bringing thick strands of hair with them until she’s got nothing but a few brittle locks at her temples.

What does not make it on the floor sticks to Eddie like cling-on and he yelps, trying to rip them from his wrists, where they tighten like handcuffs. His nails dig into himself, there, at the bone and the fleshy part of his hand, breaking skin and drawing blood, which pools in his nail beds. They stay there, the pieces of her hair, twining and twisting, even with the punctures he makes into his own body. He _hurts himself_ to get free of them, of this, of… of… of _her._

His mother-leper waddles closer, huge and terrifying, wailing at him. Her mouth moves, but she says no words he can understand. There is only the shrill sound of her discontent, something Eddie is unfortunately very familiar with.

He flinches when she gets close, her breath fanning hot against his face. Her hand, slick and slimy and cold, runs up his back to cup his neck and he jerks forward. “Listen to Mommy,” she says, warbled and low, ignoring his insistence to flee. “I know what’s best for you. I know how to take care of you. Take the medicines. They’ll _help._ ”

He hates the way she says _help._ Hates the way it sounds like _fix._

Eddie shakes his head so hard he gives himself what he thinks is whiplash and braces himself to pull her hand from him. He hisses out when he makes contact, her touch burning him. He tugs at her, throwing her hand back, and curls his fingers into his palm, which radiates heat, singed like he’s been playing with fire.

She’s left an imprint of herself there, and one on his neck, red and boiling.

“ _Look!_ ” she cries out, gesturing. He ducks out of her way before she can do more harm, gritting his teeth. “You’ve been hurt. I _told_ you you’d get hurt if you left the house, and you have! If you’d just _listened_ to Mommy…”

“I didn’t…” Eddie argues, gasping around the searing pain of a blister. “ _I_ didn’t get hurt, Ma. _You_ hurt me.”

“No, Eddie-bear, you’re mistaken!” she says. “I’m just keeping you safe!”

_Is she?_

He looks at her, wide-eyed, at her decaying face, and her bloated cheeks. At the yellowing, cracked fingernails of her proffered hand, still trying to get him to take pills he knows he doesn’t need. They sit there, in the filth of her skin, surrounded by cuticles that are bloody and ripped. Where have these hands been? Where has _she_ been?

These pills—were they ever meant to _help_ him?

( _Once, but that was a long time ago, and they were used to control you, too, Eddie._ )

She is so _gross,_ sitting there like she is, covered in grime and riddled with boils and sores.

And Eddie… Eddie is—he looks at himself, trapped in this disgusting house, and there is not one thing wrong with him. Wet shorts, maybe, but that can be fixed once he’s gotten up, but Sonia can’t… she can _never—_

Eddie is _clean._ Eddie is _healthy._ Where everything is dark, dank, and filthy, Eddie is not. He’s the only thing here that is—what’s the word?— _light._

“You aren’t,” he says suddenly, fierce in the knowledge. He’s fine besides the marks marring his skin, marks _she_ put there. “You’re not keeping me safe. _You’re_ the thing I need to be kept safe _from!_ ”

He’s fine. He’s fine. _He’s fine._

This fear—the leper, the sickness, the disease. _Death…_

It’s not _his._ It’s his mother’s, and she’s projected it onto him, and he has never been strong enough to combat it. He’s let it fester and bloom inside him, let it be his only defining characteristic. It has taken him over, dictated all of his decisions, actions. _Him._

_And you know that, Eddie, you knew that before, do you remember? You were starting to find out._

“I don’t need those,” he tells her. “Maybe you do, but I never did. You make me take all of those because _you’re_ scared, Ma. _You._ You don’t want me to catch all the things they talk about in the news, you don’t want me to end up like Dad, you don’t want to be _alone,_ so you—you _locked me up,_ and—”

“I did it to protect you!” she yells at him, but he’s not listening. He won’t. Not ever again. She’s wrong. “Eddie, I was trying to… you have to understand, you’re just like your father. You’re so _fragile,_ so susceptible. You could get sick at _any moment,_ and those friends of yours, they never took—”

“ _What friends?_ ” Eddie shouts back. “ _What friends, Ma?_ I don’t have any, you made sure of that!”

Her voice rises an octave, curdling into an awkward sing song of a screech. “ _The ones I hid you from!_ ”

“The ones you—”

But Eddie’s retort dies on his tongue, the hairs on the back of his neck, burnt and otherwise, rising. He’d thought there was nothing worse than the leper turning into his mother, but there _is,_ and it’s happening now. Sonia breaks out into a silent scream, mouth open and terrified, and her body shudders and seizes and shakes. Tufts of red hair replace what’s left of her own, colorful pom poms sprout down the length of her shirt, and her head twists around like an owl’s until large eyes are blinking at him. They are yellow and bright, matched with a mocking smile he remembers seeing the last time he’d slept, drawn onto a red balloon that had killed him in the end.

“Those awful boys,” the clown chirps, “and that _dirty, dirty_ girl!”

It has teeth that are too big for its face, wetting its lower lip, unnatural and scary. Eddie can see its discolored tongue, pooling with saliva.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Eddie says, staring as bravely as he can into those eyes, the thing looming and menacing above him.

_But you do, Eddie. You do._

“Losers,” It provides. “You were a bunch of little losers, thinking you could take me on. Do you remember? No one liked you. Not your parents, or the other kids. No friends!”

“We liked each other,” Eddie finds himself snapping. He doesn’t know who this _we_ is, but he is strong in his conviction. He knows it to be true, him and those awful boys and that dirty, dirty girl. An awful description for the best people he’s ever met. “Didn’t matter that we were losers, just that we had each other.”

“He is starting to remember!” the clown cheers, delighted. “Do you hear that, ladies and gentlemen? It’s all coming back!”

The shadows around them seem to consider Eddie, take note of this impressive feat, and then they ignore him again, drawn to the imposing figure of the clown. It stands large in the hall, shoulders pressed to each wall, all but ten feet tall. Maybe more. Its forehead almost grazes the ceiling. Eddie has ever been afraid of clowns before, but he thinks he is now, looking at how awful they can be. Where are the jokes? The tricks?

“I can show you,” the thing says, widening its grin. “I have so many tricks! I missed you, Eddie, I really did! We didn’t get to play enough before, and then I couldn’t get your attention, but now we have all this time!”

“N-no,” Eddie splutters. “I don’t think we really do. I think… I think I have to go.”

_Which house are you leaving?_

“Where will you go that I won’t be able to find?” the clown asks. “There is nowhere to hide, Eddie Spaghetti. You cannot escape me, do you remember that? Do you remember how I was _everywhere_ and I knew _everything_ about you? Do you remember anything?” It is on top of him now, face to face. “Do you want to?”

Eddie opens his mouth to answer, but his body does most of the talking, shirking back in horror, and _falling._

He’d forgotten about the hole in the ground.

The distance is too short for him to scream, but the wind is still knocked out of him as he lands with a devastating crunch on the floor. Mind-numbing pain travels from his shoulder to his elbow, and Eddie clutches his wrist, holding his arm as close to his chest as possible.

From above, the clown leaps to follow him, landing over him, hovering on all fours, eyes wide with hunger.

Eddie braces himself for the pain, kicking out at it, feet catching at its chest. The clown does not budge, smiling pleasantly. Eddie’s eyes well up with tears, the terror of being stuck, of being _caught_ overwhelming him. He can’t move, and his arm hurts, and he’s going to be eaten by this goddamn fucking clown because that’s what Pennywise fucking does, and if that is not _goddamn karma_ for escaping it the first time—

“Yes,” Pennywise purrs, reading his mind, running rampant with thoughts and memories. “Yes, that’s what happened. That’s what I wanted. Tell me more, Eddie. Tell me you remember the rest.”

He can’t speak, terrified into silence, but that doesn’t seem to matter.

He remembers being this close to the clown, abandoned in its house. Neibolt Street, that’s where he is. _29 Neibolt Street,_ the place where hobos and crackheads come to lay low, never to be seen from again.

He’d been here once, and he’d faced this clown, this Pennywise, and he’d looked past this thing, hoping that… that…

“Almost there,” Pennywise coos. “It’s right there. _Think._ ”

It wants to eat him.

“Yes.”

It wants to eat all of them.

“Who?”

They didn’t all come in that day, not at first. It was… it was Eddie, and Bill, and Bev was there, to save him from this, and there was… it was…

“So close…”

Richie.

It was _Richie._

Bill and Eddie and Richie, they came in here to investigate because Bill’s brother was missing (dead), and Eddie’d gotten caught, and he’d so wanted Richie to come and—

“He is,” Pennywise says. “Just like last time. He’s coming, Eddie. He’s coming for _you._ He wished for you and we granted it because he’s _sad_ and _pathetic,_ and he’s coming _just for you._ ” He looms in closer. “But let me tell you something, Eddie-bear, he can’t save you. No one can. You’ll be mine soon enough.”

Eddie chokes on a sob, overcome, and pushes out with all his might again, but Pennywise wraps his long, spindly fingers around his ankles and twists.

Eddie is stuck. Eddie is caught. Eddie is not going anywhere. He never was.

The clown’s face cracks as its mouth widens, showing off rows and rows of teeth. Eddie remembers this now, remembers being this close, remembers the terror. He’d hoped someone (Richie) would come barreling in through the door opposite them to save him.

Then, someone did.

Now, Pennywise closes in and bites.

* * *

( _November 20, 2:30 AM_ )

6

Stan is so much faster than Richie, swift and sure, like he knows exactly where to go and how to get there. Richie follows after him like he has a map of their town, his legs pumping and his breath coming out in hard, gasping pants. He feels like maybe his lungs are going to give way, collapse in on themselves, on _him,_ but he refuses to stop.

He needs to get as much distance between himself and the wolf as possible. If they can outrun It, they can live to see another day. That’s how it works.

Stan veers left between a grouping of trees, and Richie can see where he’s headed, knows the path he’s about to take, but as he turns to follow, he makes the mistake of looking behind him.

The wolf is on his heels, feet away from making contact with him, and Richie shoots forward, trying to increase the distance between them as much as possible. Their eyes meet regardless, and the wolf’s snarly jaw stretches into a grin, excited and hungry. _Always_ hungry. It has never not felt hunger.

“Richie,” It goads in his head. “Stop running from me! You know who to say. You know what to do. Tell me who you’d trade. Say the name even though I know. I’ll give you everything you want if you give me an answer. I can _feel_ it, Richie, just _give in—_ ”

The face appears in his mind’s eye, familiar and loyal, a friend since he was fuckin’, like, eight years old, and Richie—

Richie blinks it away, angry yet again that It is working at the seams of his subconscious, infiltrating him like he’s nothing but a puppet. “Fuck _off,_ ” he shouts backwards, “and get out of my head! You don’t get to… don’t fuckin’ _manipulate_ me like that.”

“I’m not,” It replies. “You opened yourself up to me. I know everything about you, Richard Tozier. I _know_ you now.”

“I didn’t tell you shit,” Richie snaps. “I went to the _bridge—_ ”

The wolf lets out a howling cackle, the sound of it shaking the foundations of Derry. Richie thinks he sees a tree shake, worries it’s going to fall on him. It doesn’t, but he speeds up anyway, not eager to become mush if they _do_ end up on the ground. “Are we not the same, the bridge and I?” It asks. “You let one in, you let them all.”

Richie doesn’t like the sound of that and trips over a root as he moves forward, landing on his hands and knees. He forces himself up, his palms smarting, dirt smudged into the scrapes there, and feels the wolf, a heat at his back he cannot ignore. Richie grabs the tree, slices his ruined hands on the bark, deepening the wounds, and pitches forward only to trip again.

The wolf brushes a tentative claw against the back of his neck, soft and almost comforting, like Richie and It and all of Its various forms are fucking _friends._ Richie shudders at the evil that fills the thing, the way it seems to spread to him, and pushes himself away, eager to get home. Or somewhere. Anywhere.

But when he looks up for a marker, for direction, Stan is nowhere to be found.

Stan has—

Stan has _left him._

Richie’s heart drops to his stomach and then out of his ass, lost to him in the mess that is the Barrens, but no matter. It’s fine. _It’s fine._ He just has to keep running. He needs to get the wolf out of the picture, needs to get as far away as possible. He can’t let the wolf ( _It_ ) know he doesn't know where he is, but once he finds a main road, he can meet Stan at his house, or he can get to his own, or even—fuck, he’d go to fuckin’ Bill’s right now.

He just has to _keep moving._

But where is he?

( _Don’t let It know._ )

Where is the main road? _Think, Richie, think._ The Barrens are _yours;_ they are not It’s. It does not belong here. _You do._

What should he do? _What should he do?_

He has to find a public place. He’s not being followed by another human, not by Bowers or his pack of fucktards, or even It in a form that looks normal. He’s being followed by a _werewolf._ Can It change quickly when they make it somewhere that’s likely to be inhabited by—

Richie checks the watch at his wrist. _Fuck._ It’s too late for anyone to notice anything and care about it.

But _still._

A werewolf is not normal. It would have to double back and regroup if they make it to a place It could be seen. What Richie knows about It, It likes to hide, likes to make individual attacks where there are no witnesses, where It can feast and ruin and win. If Richie makes it somewhere that’s not _here,_ not the Barrens, It would have to lick Its wounds and retreat.

Richie would still give It what It wanted, which is attention. Would still let the rest of them know It is back, would live to see another day, but Richie would _win,_ which is what he needs. After this, he needs that, more than anything, but Stan is not here, and Stan was the one leading, and Richie does not know where he—

 _Stay straight and then turn left at the big oak tree,_ a voice says in his head. The same one as before, not the one chasing him now.

Richie follows it, emerging from the Barrens. The ground changes from dirt and grass to concrete, Richie’s feet pounding on the pavement. He speeds ahead, relieved at the sight of street names and traffic lights. He thinks he hears the wolf tear through the bushes behind him, but this time Richie does not bother to check.

_Right._

He swerves.

_Left, then quick right._

_Keep going straight._

It may be stupid, following this voice he doesn’t know, but Richie doesn’t fight it. It has led him out of the nightmare that could have been the Barrens, made him bring Stan with him, and has kept him from being werewolf chow. He trusts it, as dumb as it is to trust something without a face, and Richie listens to its directions, weaving in and out of Derry.

The houses around him are familiar; he notes the landmarks and the signs. Up ahead, there’s the park he’d broken his ankle at from swinging too high and jumping at the peak. It takes him a moment too long to realize he’s been spit out on the other side of town, at the far end of the Barrens, which is—

That’s fine. It’s fine.

All he has to do is find Kansas Street from here, or even Jackson, and follow those back to Main, which could lead him to a number of places—the strip that makes up town, with all the shops, or the Kissing Bridge, which isn’t too far from his house to begin with. He could even find his way to Ben’s from here, climbing the side of his house to get into his bedroom through the window. Maybe he’s left the spare key under the plant in his backyard, the one that unlocks the back door that leads to the kitchen. Maybe he can—

_Make a right._

Mind still reeling with possibilities, Richie’s feet move of their own accord. He turns down a street—none of the ones he’d thought about—residential and dark, lit up with a few streetlights, shadows growing long and dark along the concrete.

This street… it’s…

Richie wants to stumble to a stop, but he can’t, his legs moving as the voice tells him to _Cross._

He does, switching sides, and he checks behind him to see if the wolf has followed. It hasn’t. It’s just Richie, a deserted street, and an ungodly hour of the morning.

_Fourth house up._

He slows to a stop in front of it, squinting at it, white and seemingly spotless, untouched by the darkness that’s chasing after Richie, like it’s being protected from It. The lawn is brown, full of dead and dying grass, the only touch of autumn to leave a mark, readying it for the winter that is sure to come swooping in any second. The gate surrounding it is open just a bit, like the last person to enter through it hadn’t shoved it closed hard enough.

Richie looks at it, hands in his pockets, head tilted to the side. He feels like he knows it, like he’s been here before, but he doesn’t remember ever being this far on this side of town. Ben lives around here, he’s established that, but his place is farther down and to the left, not so close to the rich part, where people like the Bowies and Muellers live.

_Look up._

There’s a light on in the room at the highest level, not the second, but a bit more. It looks almost like a tower, the way it is disconnected from the rest of the house, and there is something hanging from the windowsill. Richie can’t see what it is, but somewhere deep inside of him, he knows it’s cute.

( _Cute, cute, cute._ )

 _The room,_ the voice says. _Go up to it._

“No,” Richie says aloud. He clears his throat, adds softer, “That’s breaking and entering. I can’t just _go_ into someone’s house.”

 _Go,_ it insists.

“ _No,_ ” Richie says. He may be a fucking delinquent, but he’s not a whole ass _criminal,_ what the fuck.

The voice makes a sound like a sigh, and then Richie is moving because he hears the roar of the wolf, loud and close, somewhere behind him. That gate makes a whining sound as he shoves it open, but he can’t be fucked to care, streaking across the lawn in a frenzy. He doesn’t want It to see him, to find him, not after all that fucking running he did, and he launches himself into the tree at the side of the house.

His hands and toes fit into the grooves and twists here like second nature, like he’s done it before. He irritates every one of his injuries, but pushes past them, climbing up. He knows somehow that his weight can be held by this one branch right here, long and thick, and inches along it, stopping halfway to listen.

There are no sounds, just the whistle of the wind and the chirp of some crickets. Richie swallows, looks down, and then continues his crawl forward until he is face to face with—

 _Aw,_ it’s a _garden,_ hanging from this window. There are tiny little plants, flowers and leaves in bloom here, obviously taken care of with a diligence that is admirable.

( _Wrong A word, Richie. I think you mean adorable._ )

He does his best to avoid irritating it, knowing inexplicably the owner would be pissed if he fucked with it—he’d tried to grow tomatoes once but the area was too small for that—and wraps his fingers around the window. He’s thrilled to find it is unlocked and easily hoists it up, just as the wolf shrieks, searching for Richie.

Richie will not let It find him. 

He pushes the frame up as high as it can go, throws one leg over, and then tumbles inside, his balance off. He tries to take a look at the garden, hoping he hasn’t knocked it down, and he’s flat on the floor, tangled in himself. The world is silenced as the window slams shut, separating him from all that’s out there, and for the first time, Richie feels like he can breathe.

He runs a hand through his hair, scratching at his scalp, and pushes his glasses up so he can press the heels of his palms to his eyes. He applies so much pressure that the darkness pulses with light and then he _laughs._ It’s a crazed, frantic sort of thing, his entire body trembling.

To _think_ he’d thought he’d been at his all-time low earlier, high and crying in a bathroom, missing someone who hasn’t thought about him since _19-fucking-89,_ but now he’s got too many cuts and scrapes to count, and probably a fucked up shoulder.

Honestly, the physical pain is better than the emotional, and he focuses on cataloging his wounds because it’s better than worrying about the real matter at hand.

He’s in _someone’s house._ Someone’s. Fucking. House.

This is a bedroom, he thinks. A bland one at that. The walls are white, with nothing on them, and there’s a bookshelf, along with a bed, messily made, like someone had laid in it. Stars litter the rug, plucked from the ceiling. Not all of them made it off. A radio sits on the nightstand, but no music plays, just staticky silence like it’s done with its tape. 

None of that matters, though, or maybe it does and Richie doesn’t care, but how can he when he’s safe? When for the _first time_ he’s safe?

He pushes himself up, fixing his glasses, and thinks about Stan— _worries about Stan—_ and hopes he’s burst through his father’s artfully cut bushes and is sliding back into his bed, wishing this was all a terrible, terrible dream. He hopes he hasn’t realized Richie is missing, hope he’s not turning around to find him.

It seemed like It was after Richie this time, but what if It goes after Stan now that It can’t find him? Worse, what if It listened to Richie’s treacherous heart and brain and goes after B—

 _No,_ he thinks. _Don’t put that out there. Don’t even think about—he’s a good friend, you’re a good friend, it was a moment of goddamn weakness, you’re allowed those—_

“Uh,” a voice demands, out loud and not in his head, a figure in the doorway. “Who the _fuck_ —”

Richie’s mouth runs before he can form a coherent thought. “I’m sorry,” he blurts. “I didn’t mean to just, like, _enter_ your house, but I was just… I was—”

His words stop, hard and sudden, as the tone of voice becomes familiar to his ears. He knows who this is. Knows how they enunciate words when they’re stressed, and scared, and happy. Knows how they say curse words and how they ask questions. Knows the way they say his name, each and every different version. _He knows them._

Fuck.

He could never _not_ know who this is.

Richie’s heart picks up speed at such a rate that he feels nauseous again. He swallows past it, urging himself to remain calm, cool, and collected (but that was never the case when Eddie was involved) and he pulls his hand over his face.

He feels like maybe he should’ve looked a little better for this, for the first time seeing him since fuckin’ _eighth grade._

He’s shaking when he looks at him, eyes drying out from his complete lack of blinking, and Richie thinks he’s never seen a more perfect sight in his life.

Eddie stands there, paler than he remembers, but there all the same. His imagination could never have done him justice, as much as he tried. He never could have thought he’d spring up the way he has, though not as tall as Richie, or broadened out, his shoulders starting to stretch his shirt out. There are _so many_ differences they make Richie woozy, but there are things that’ve stayed the same, like his hair, dark and soft, begging for Richie to touch it, and every single thing about his face.

 _The face—_ the eyes, dark; the nose, crooked; the brows, thick; the jaw, sharp. Even the way he bites his cheek, confused, frowning at Richie like he doesn’t remember him, like he’s not sure why he’s broken into his room. That’s the same, too. 

He’s older, of course. The same, but different, and Richie cannot find anything wrong with him.

He is _perfect,_ but what else is new?

He’s everything Richie has ever wished for, knees bruised and fingers full of tiny cuts and splinters in front of that damn bridge. He’s everything he’s craved, dreamt, and begged for.

Richie doesn’t know who to thank for this—the bridge, the fucking clown ( _you let one in, you let them all_ ), the _essence_ of goddamn Derry—so he thanks them all, sniffling. He thinks he’s going to cry, those ugly tears that never stop, that make his face a gross, splotchy shade of red. 

He wants to say something more than a strangled apology for breaking in, but he can’t get the words out. Can’t get _the word_ (his name) out. He just wants to say it, say anything, but Eddie is coming closer and he’s even more perfect up close, where Richie can see every tiny freckle beneath his lashes, dark against his skin. 

Eddie’s eyes glitter like he knows him, and Richie’s heart does this split-second flutter, thinking that Eddie’s going to reach out and—and—

Well, his fantasies of this moment are really not anything he’d like to share currently, and none of them matter, anyway, in the long run. 

He’s so, _so_ swept up in Eddie’s face he misses the baseball bat that comes flying at his head and then it’s too late to say anything, pain bursting at his temple. 

The world goes black as he crumples to the floor at Eddie’s feet, and he thinks wildly that this position would be good to beg Eddie for forgiveness for leaving him behind. 


	4. stuck in the same place i've always been

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Answer the question.”
> 
> “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Richie blurts out, and then, “I’d like to go back to you hitting me _over the head_ with a—was it a baseball bat? Can we go back to that?”
> 
> “You broke into my bedroom at—” Eddie checks his watch, scrunches up his nose, considers the time like he’s counting numbers in his head. “Three in the morning. What was I supposed to do, make you breakfast?”
> 
> “That woulda been nice,” Richie replies, blinking up at Eddie, who rolls his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me tell you 1) how hard it was to write this chapter because both their POVs are in it, 2) how much Eddie and Richie did not want any of what happened to happen, and 3) how unmotivated I was all of January. The answer to all three of those is a lot/very/I had all the problems. But here I am, doing better on day three of February than I did all last month, so I think we're winning here maybe. 
> 
> Thank you for all the comments last chapter! I didn't respond to any because I, of course, got the flu for a week, but I really appreciate them. I'm glad you are enjoying this.

1

The thud of the bat reverberates through his head, a dull _clunk_ that expands and grows like heat, filling the spaces between his brain and the bone of his skull. He tries to fight the singular focus he has on it— _thud-thud-THUD—_ and swallows around the searing pain traveling from his temple to the spaces behind his eyes and down his spine. His entire body seems to vibrate like a violin string.

He feels nauseous, his gut churning, his vision blurring, and Richie has never been one to fight the tug of consciousness before, except—

_Except._

The colors of his room (bland, beige, boring) bleed together, all but disappearing, turning everything around Eddie— _Eddie!_ —a muted greyscale that only seems to enhance the (logically incorrect) concept that Eddie’s real. That he exists. That he’s been in Derry since—been in Derry _this whole time._ That he’s standing in front of him now, grip slackening on the baseball bat he has no real reason to own.

Eddie seeps the vibrancy out of the room, takes what’s rightfully his—color, life, _awareness—_ and all but fucking glows in front of him. Richie drinks him in. All of him. The creamy white of his skin, the ruddy red of his hands, his knuckles. The rosy pink of his cheeks and how that color spreads down his neck. The contrasting difference in the browns of him, dark and tantalizing, like melted chocolate, at his eyes, and soft and warm at his hair, which curls at his forehead, at his ears.

He’s growing blurry around the edges, shimmering in front of him with every blink, and perhaps it’s a poor choice to reach out and _touch,_ given everything, but he does it anyway. Just to prove to himself that he’s there, that he’s real, that this isn’t some weed-induced, pity party fever dream he’s having on the floor of his bathroom.

His hand hits his hip and the material of his pajama pants, soft and flannel, and Richie inhales sharply, pressing the pad of his thumb harder there, feeling the combined warmth of clothing and body heat. He clears his throat and pulls back before he can get himself in trouble with his wandering touch. Wandering _desire._

But his hand never makes it back to his side, where he was going to ball it into a fist and shove it in his pocket. Where he was going to breathe through the black spots in his vision, afraid that if he passes out, he’ll lose this, whatever it is.

He hears the bat fall, a sound that echoes just as the one in his head does. It does this twice, once when it initially hits the ground and again when the rest of it follows, and it is a cacophony of _thud, thud, thud,_ circling him, bothering him like a pest. Like a bug at his ear.

Eddie takes his hand. That’s what happens.

He takes it, and he cements himself in Richie’s mind, takes himself out of Imaginary and puts him in Real—because Richie has only ever held Eddie’s hand once, back when they were thirteen. Maybe twelve, and he hasn’t ever been able to remember what that was like. He’d never thought he’d lose his chance to do it again the way he had. Had always thought _he’d_ be the chicken there, so close but too far away from what he wanted. What he wants.

Present. Not past. Never past.

It’s warm, Eddie’s skin is, and he is hesitant as he slides their palms together. Richie is hyper aware of the differences between them and he remembers, very distinctly, how nervous Eddie’d been every time they played outside, how his mom would find out he was where he shouldn’t be just by his hands alone. He likes the feel of him now, but he wishes he’d been able to be free with his scrapes. Wishes he hadn’t been so scared to fall all the time.

He should’ve known Richie’d catch him.

Should’ve known Richie’d kiss his bruises if he couldn’t get there in time.

Richie leaves his arm slack between them, lets Eddie do what he wants, and when Eddie’s fingers curl around his, fill the spaces life has left for him and him alone, Richie exhales, slow and steady. Nausea creeps on the edge of it, as does the black of unconsciousness, waiting for him, and them, and this moment to pass, almost as if the world does not want him to fall apart before discovering this.

Him.

_Eddie._

They remain there with inches between them that feel like miles. Richie realizes he’s fallen, and maybe that’s why Eddie is holding on to him like this. Maybe it has nothing to do with memory and reconnecting and all that. Maybe it’s because it’s late at night, or early in the morning, or whatever way he wants to tell time, and Richie has shimmied through his window like a crazed lunatic, offering up no explanation and staring at him like he’s—like—

“I missed you,” he blurts out, a garble of words he’s not even sure make a lick of sense to anyone but him, “Eddie.”

He feels Eddie’s pulse jump at his wrist, where his nails dig into the skin there, right by the bone.

2

At the start, Richie would write Eddie letters.

He’d steal away envelopes and stamps from his father’s office and stationery from his sister’s desk, the kind she spritzed with perfume before she mailed them out because she was going through a _Grease_ phase and thought damp paper that smelled like an old lady was _peak romance._ He’d force himself in his closet, hiding behind an array of shirts and the spare suit he had, the one he wore to Stan’s bar mitzvah, and he’d write to Eddie like he was away at camp, or at his aunt’s for the summer, or… or… anywhere that wasn’t completely and totally unattainable, as far away from Richie as humanly possible.

Before he forgot where he lived, Richie would scrawl his address on the front of the envelope and physically mail it, waiting for the day it came back to him— _return to sender—_ or was answered. Neither of those things happened, and eventually he couldn’t remember what street Eddie lived on, and the letters he wrote were squirreled away in a box at the top of that very closet he wrote them in.

 _Dear Eddie,_ he would say, like someone writing into the newspaper for advice or some shit. _Today Ben passed out when we had to dissect a frog in class._

_Bev got into the fashion design elective and she made me this really cool denim jacket._

_Mike’s the coolest kid at school, fucking obviously, and he’s probably going to join the football team._

_Bill’s art is in some exhibit in Bangor, so we’re all going to see it. It’s morbid as shit, but he’s pretty good, so._

_I miss you, you know. The dynamic isn’t the same without you. Kind of feels like I’m missing a limb. Like we all are, but no one can remember that we had it, except me. I remember you. I’ll never forget._

He stopped after a while. It felt more like a diary than anything else and Richie didn’t like that he was using Eddie for that. Didn’t like how honest he was being with himself, either—no veiled jokes or self-deprecating humor to lighten the load. Just truth.

He’d gotten as far as physically writing it out, the thought he’s had since he was maybe fifteen, sitting in his room and listening to _Eddie My Love_ on a devastating loop.

_If I had known that was the last time I’d see you, I think I would’ve kissed you. I wish I had known better. I wish I had been braver. I wish—_

_I wish._

That letter was never finished, torn into tiny little pieces Richie shoved in the wicker wastepaper basket in his bathroom.

3

“I missed you,” the stranger— _no, Eddie, you_ know _him—_ slurs. His face is paling by the second, but his eyes are fierce. Aware. Trained on Eddie like they’ve never seen anything like him. Like they’ll _never_ see anything like him again. The pupils are huge, leaving nothing but a thin line of brown—no, that’s not right, they’re more than brown, but _what—_ around the black, glassy and disorientated even as they focus on him.

And then he says his name, and the way he does, the way his voice pitches low, gravelly, thick like molasses—it sends a shiver down Eddie’s spine. Has the hairs standing upright on the back of his neck. His tongue curls around it like a prayer, holds it, nurtures it, lets it go into the world with just enough wanting that Eddie feels it wrap himself around him like an embrace.

Like the hugs he doesn’t get.

Eddie doesn’t wonder how this kid knows his name, doesn’t question the weirdness of it. He thinks _I missed you, Eddie,_ hears the voice speak his name like it’s something more than it is, and finds his mouth about to move, lips prying apart to respond.

He stops himself from voicing it, but it runs through his head anyway. _I missed you, too,_ he thinks, and it’s the truth. _I missed you._

The fingers tighten minutely in his own, and there is a hitch in his breathing, and Eddie realizes that during this whole, long, drawn out thing—it’s only been forty-five seconds—the kid has been _falling._

He finishes that now, tripping over his feet, eyes sliding closed because, you know, Eddie’s whacked him pretty hard with a baseball bat. Because he’s not someone Eddie’s supposed to hold hands with; he’s someone who has _broken into his house._ Climbed in through his window and made himself at home. What the _fuck._

He’s _holding hands with someone who broke into his house._

Who _knows_ his _name._

The fuck does Eddie think this is? A fucking _rom-com?_

But still.

_Still._

Eddie drops down after him, trying to keep him from bashing his head further, and just narrowly misses out on succeeding. The thing is that Eddie isn’t thinking fast enough, confused by his thought processes, the way he felt trapped in a gaze, but trapped in a way that didn’t feel like… didn’t feel stifling. That didn’t feel the way it felt to be in this house.

He winces at the sound it makes, all the dead weight crashing to the ground, and then watches in abject horror as one of the kid’s long legs kicks out, and—

It happens in slow motion, almost.

His foot hits the lamp by the desk, shakes it. Gravity tries to catch it, keep it upright, but fails and then it careens down. It bounces off the mattress and shatters on the ground; the cord, still plugged into the wall, lets out a high-pitched squeak and sparks, snapping tight. That pulls from the socket, snags on the desk chair, wrapping around the leg. That falls, too, burdened by the heavy weight of the clothes he couldn’t be bothered to put away.

_Bang, bang, bang._

It is a loud cacophony of sound, a train wreck of epic proportions. The alarm clock on his nightstand reads 3:01 in red, digitized numbers, blinking in the sudden dimness, and it is too early for this.

Eddie does not move, though, even though he should.

He gets more comfortable, actually, and crosses his legs pretzel-style, lifting the guy’s head up off the floor as gingerly as possible. There is a bump at his temple, already beginning to bruise, and Eddie rests him in his lap.

He thinks maybe he broke his glasses, too, and takes those off. There is a crack in one lens, thin and splintering throughout the width of it. Eddie tucks them away in his pocket, not wishing to break them further, and finds himself running his fingers through dark, wavy hair. The texture of it is nice, soft yet unkempt, and there is a clump at his ear that is matted with—dirt?

Eddie’s fingers come back red. Not dirt, then. He rubs them together, the pads. His skin is sticky. He wonders vaguely what happened to this guy that made him like this, that had him coming through his window the way he did, but thinks maybe he knows the answer already without asking. His heart pounds double-time in his chest at the thought.

At the _fear._

Not of him, but of something else. Something worse.

He runs his thumb along his jawline, sharp like a blade, and watches how he breathes out, seemingly comforted by his touch when two things happen.

First: he notices the wound at his shoulder, slashes in his jacket to his skin, and the steadily flowing blood that leaks down his arm. It stains his sleeve, wraps around his wrist like a bracelet.

Second: his mother’s recliner squeaks, cutting through the hum of the television downstairs.

“Fuck,” Eddie says, but he doesn’t know if it’s because of the—are those _claw marks?—_ or the prospect of Sonia _Everything Can and Will Hurt You, Eddie_ Kaspbrak coming upstairs and seeing _this._

He prods at the injury, ignores the groan that falls from red, chapped lips, and decides he needs to be able to see it better to fully understand the extent of it.

The part of him that’s bleeding, of course.

Not the mouth.

If that needed to be explained. Which it doesn’t, of course.

He needs to see the wound, needs to see how deep it is, so he can figure out what to do with it. Send him to a hospital, probably, because as good as Eddie is with medicine, he’s not as good as this shocking amount of blood implies he should be.

Eddie fights the twitch of his fingers—he really wants to take this kid’s jacket off—and listens out for the movement of his mother. Their house is old, which is a blessing and a curse. A curse because it is wrought with shadows and creaking noises and things that can _scare_ him, but a blessing because that means he can hear Sonia, no matter where he is. And here, on the floor of his bedroom, he can make out her shuffle from the living room to the stairs.

The groan of the steps, the fourth one specifically.

The sound the wooden railing makes beneath her hand.

And then she’s close enough that he can hear her labored breaths, the way she’s over-exerted herself in coming to him. He’s surprised, honestly, that she hadn’t just yelled at him from the foot of the stairs. Maybe it’s too early for her to do that. Maybe she’s _actually_ concerned for once, like she claimed she was when she took the lock from his door.

_What if something happens, Eddie-bear?_

Well, it did, Ma, what are you gonna do about it?

(She’s not going to do anything, he decides.)

His bedroom door flings open—he has _no_ privacy whatsoever—just as he’s done shoving the heavy limbs beneath his bed. She’d never think to check under there. She’d never think to look for some _one_ in the first place. She is not diligent at all.

“Eddie?” she asks, squinting at him from behind large, circular glasses. They remind him of the pair he’s got in his pocket. He slips his hand there, closing his fingers around the arms.

“Hey,” he replies, casually cool and kind of twitchy. “What’s up?”

“What’s up?” she repeats, mouth pinched at the corners. Her face is covered in the green gunk she applies to it nightly, some dumb mask that’s supposed to keep her looking youthful or some health-conscious shit like that. It’s flaking where she moves, dried to her skin; Eddie focuses on that, on the fact that she’s probably had it on for longer than she needs to, and avoids the look in her eyes. It’s calculating. Somehow all-knowing. He knows that if she takes a good look at him, she’ll figure it all out.

He avoids her, looks behind her, into the dark hall.

“It’s three in the morning,” she continues on, “what do you mean _what’s up?_ You’re making a racket.”

Eddie sniffs. Of course. Not _are you okay?_ but _you’re making a racket._ Jesus.

“Sorry,” he says. “It was an accident. I…” He makes the mistake of looking at her head-on, the whites of her eyes gleaming yellow, almost, in comparison to the shit on her face. He blinks and glances away, remembers how she’d been there one second and shifted the next, turning into—

He clears his throat. “I fell,” he provides. “I had a nightmare, and—”

“Another one?” And for a typical mother, that question would mean something. To Eddie, from Sonia, it sounds accusatory.

“Yeah,” he lies. “I’m sorry. I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“No,” she says, “but this is the second time this has happened this week. You should’ve told me you were having problems sleeping. Have you been taking your medications?”

“I take everything you—I’m not have problems sleeping, Ma,” he says.

She quirks a brow. “Explain the nightmares, Eddie-bear.” She always uses that stupid nickname when she thinks she has the upper hand. When she _wants_ the upper hand. It makes Eddie’s skin crawl, so he thinks she gets it. “The tossing and turning so hard you fall out of bed. You’re having such vivid dreams you’re _seeing things._ That’s not normal, sweetheart. We’ll have to take you to the doctor.”

“No,” he says. “I’m fine. I’m just… it’s normal to have nightmares sometimes, and I was on the edge of the bed, I think, so…”

“What was it about?” Sonia asks. “The nightmare.”

 _A house,_ he thinks. _A leper. A clown. You. Things I’m afraid of. Things I’ve… things I’ve faced before._ He refrains from turning around, refrains from looking for the person who—the person—

 _He is,_ a voice whispers in his mind, a memory of the dream that still plagues him, that’s stuck to his brain like glue. _Just like last time. He’s coming, Eddie. He’s coming for you. He wished for you…_

“I don’t remember,” Eddie answers his mother. “Nothing important, probably. Just a nightmare.”

But who? Who is coming for him? Who is this under his bed? How did he know he was coming?

_Think._

“I _know_ him,” he mumbles. That’s why he wants to help him. He _knows_ him.

_But how?_

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” Eddie says. “I’m just…” He shakes his head, wipes a hand over his face. He’s sweaty.

“Oh, Eddie-bear,” Sonia coos, and she’s much closer than she was before. He’s looking right at her chin, feeling the cold, clamminess of her hands as she palms his cheeks. “You’re warm, and you’re so very pale, and your pupils are wide. How hard did you hit your head?”

He blinks, says something, but doesn’t hear what it is. His mind is reeling, trying to piece together his dream, which was more than a dream, wasn’t it, it was a… reminder. A memory? No, it was _prophetic._

It was—

He doesn’t _know_ anyone. It’s not possible for _—_

“You know you’re weak on your right side, Eddie.”

“I didn’t mean to fall,” Eddie mumbles. “I didn’t exactly have _control_ over—” He whacks her hands away from him, on the brink of something much more important than his health. “I’m fine. My arm is fine. My head is—”

Sonia breathes noisily through her nose, a sharp inhale and a loud exhale, and then presses her hand to the back of his neck. “I’m concerned,” she says, sounding the opposite. “Let’s get you some medicine for that headache.”

“I don’t have—”

“Not yet you don’t,” she interrupts, “and I don’t want to hear it tomorrow when you do. I’ve already let you miss a day of school. You don’t want to fall behind, do you? No, you don’t, and you’re already doing so poorly, so we can’t afford to dilly dally like we did last year…” She tightens her hold on him, pinching at his skin, and Eddie wriggles away from her as surreptitiously as possible, which, of course, she catches on to.

She’s the queen of being needy, of latching on, of feeling wanted, and Eddie’s always been the opposite. Always wanted space, to be his own person. They’ve never exactly meshed, not after his father’s death, and they still don’t.

Perhaps they never will, but perhaps they could have, had Eddie been someone else. Been some _where_ else. Perhaps it could have happened here and now, had the boy under his bed not fucking turned everything upside down.

Because that’s what he did, right? He showed up and everything is… everything is different now, even though nothing has happened. Something _will_ happen. The air is charged with possibility. With expectation.

That’s the only reason Eddie lets her manhandle him into the bathroom—it’s the easiest course of action. He perches on the edge of the bathtub, watching her rifle through the medicine cabinet. He wonders what she’s looking for. What she’s going to make him take this time. His head spins, full of too much information. He speculates it all: his mother, that kid, the glasses in his pocket, the way his heart is beat-beat-beat- _beating._

Sonia uncaps two different bottles, empties them into her palm. “For the pain,” she tells him, “and another for the sleeping. You can sleep in tomorrow. It is your birthday, after all.”

Eddie looks at the pills, white and innocuous, and doesn’t want to take them. “Right, my birthday,” he agrees. “Thanks.” He hopes he doesn’t sound as enthused as he feels.

The thing is—he’s not big on birthdays. They’ve always seemed like cruel reminders of all the things he hasn’t been able to do. Hasn’t been _allowed_ to do. Another year gone, stuck under this roof. Friends he doesn’t have. Experiences he’s missing out on.

He’d never cared much before. Never gave it a second’s thought. Then…

Then the kids disappeared, and they’re probably dead.

Then someone broke into his room on the morning he turned seventeen. It feels important that it happened today. That it didn’t happen yesterday and it won’t happen tomorrow. _Today._ His birthday.

Eddie glances past his mother and out into the hall like he can see down it and into his bedroom. Like he can see the ball he all but rolled that body into, shoving him under his bed.

There’s got to be something _more,_ right? Something out there. Some world, some life that he’s allowed to live. One he somehow knows he started carving out all before his accident—before the hazy summer of his broken arm.

He thinks it starts with—

No, it _does_ start with—

Something shakes at the very foundations of him. Something clings, digs into his brain, makes him think. _Really_ think. He looks up at his mother. “I’m not taking the sleeping pill,” he tells her. “It’s too late. It’ll fuck with my sleep schedule.”

“ _Eddie,_ ” she admonishes.

“I’ll take this,” he says, grabbing what he hopes is only a simple acetaminophen but is probably something stronger.

The silence stretches between them as she considers him, the request, and his blatant refusal of what she thinks is help. Eddie jiggles his foot, taps his fingers on his knee, and dry swallows.

_I missed you, Eddie._

Eddie smiles at her, forced and tight-lipped, and waits. He swallows again, feeling like the pill is lodged in his throat, and coughs.

“Fine,” she says, “but don’t complain to me when you’re tired tomorrow morning.”

_In and out, Eds. Look at me._

“I won’t,” he replies.

“And clean up that mess you’ve made in that room,” she orders. “You’ll hurt yourself on all that glass.”

_Eds, Eds, Eds—_

“Yeah, of course,” Eddie agrees, itching to go back to his room. He vibrates with it, the want.

_You know I hate it when you call me that._

Does he?

4

Richie is a turtle, kicking his legs through the Kenduskeag. He is smaller than the others, which does not bother him, and he speeds past them, clustered together, letting the water ripple after him.

He is headed to his favorite rock, up a little more, smoothed out on top from years of the stream constantly crashing over it. He will settle there, stretch out, and let the sun warm him up, steadily growing stronger as spring fades into summer.

It is the best time of year, filled to the brim with possibilities and teeming with life, and he can hear the world around him when he pops his head out from beneath the surface. The birds sing to one another, gossiping in that avian way of theirs—loud, judgmental, squawking laughter—and the fish around him glug on, careless to him, brushing against his shell without even apologizing, wrapped up in each other, then nothing, as they forget what they were speaking about. Humans stick their toes in the water at the shore, some of them blushing prettily while others frown, complaining about this teacher and that test and what classes they are excited to leave behind at the end of the month.

He considers them and their steadily pinkening faces. Hair has gone up, messy at the tops of heads, and eyes are covered by hats and glasses. There will be much more activity here in the coming months—more laughter, more conversation, more _excitement._ He is eager for it, after a cold winter.

The turtle climbs the side of his rock and basks in the sun’s glow, contented with his swim and this period of relaxation, letting the sounds of the streamside wash over him.

A robin sings, calling out for another.

Wind rustles through leaves, plays with the flowers at the edge of the walkway.

A high-pitched voice yells, “ _No, don’t! Put me down!_ ” and there is a loud, resounding splash. Water sloshes up the sides of the rock.

The turtle feels a droplet slip down his neck and run down the length of his body. It tickles.

He is on the brink of unconsciousness, _thisclose_ to sleep, when someone else, something different, breaks through the relative mundanity.

A wish—lowercase now because it is not being done properly.

The turtle opens one eye. Listens close. It’s always interesting to hear what the humans have to say, words tinged with desperation, soaked in longing. No one goes to the Bridge unless they feel they have no other choice.

 _Be more specific,_ the wooden rail of the Bridge prods delicately, pushing thought, meaning, _intention_ into the mind of the wisher. _Tell me who. I do not read minds._

The boy—it is a boy, and one the turtle knows—hesitates. Thinks. The strength of his wish reverberates through the stream, through Derry, through Maine as a whole.

 ** _I wanna know where he is._** His voice—it’s a thought, but it’s loud. He has weighed this, coming to the Bridge, expressing himself. Searching for something. Some _one._ **_I want to know he’s okay. I want—_**

 _Who?_ the Bridge asks.

 **_Eddie._ **

The turtle stands, stretches his rear left leg, and then dips a foot in the water, testing it. Warm. Comfortable. “Is that Richie Tozier?” he calls out, sending the question like a ripple downstream.

 _I do not know,_ the Bridge replies. _There is an R here. And an E._

“I’m coming,” the turtle tells it, and plunges headfirst.

Swimming with the current is easier. More fun. He tumbles back to the main road, where the Kissing Bridge is erected, bumping into schools of fish and tangling his feet in the foliage that grows at the bottom of the stream. He can still hear the boy as he travels.

He can somehow feel the insistency in which he carves the initials, even though he is not wishing on the turtle. It pricks at the sensitive skin beneath his shell, like the blade is digging into him, tearing into his flesh. Odd.

He emerges farther down than he would have liked, shaking himself out and perching on a different, more inferior rock. He lifts his head, tastes the air, and squints his eyes at the figure kneeling beside the wood, littered with initials and names, hearts and disgusting graffiti.

“It is Richie,” he decides, recognizing the hair, the glasses. His frenzied look is magnified by the prescription he wears, and even from this distance, the turtle can see how—

It’s _uncomfortable,_ almost, watching Richie. He looks away, looks back, and says, “Grant him his Wish.”

 _He has not wished for anything yet,_ the Bridge responds. _It is not complete._

“Help him,” the turtle instructs.

_He is from That Summer?_

“Yes,” he answers. Richie and six others. They would have succeeded, too, if they hadn’t been separated so soon. So easily. The turtle casts a cursory thought at the mother that took the other boy, took Eddie, and feels her, feels _them,_ miles off, hidden in plain sight, just as she wanted.

Her magic, it must be noted, is different from theirs. From this. Is more malicious in its birth.

 _He must ask it for me to grant it,_ the Bridge says, _but I will. He is… sincere. It will be done._

“Ease him along,” the turtle insists. “Tell him how.”

The Kissing Bridge listens to him, as it always does, and urges Richie Tozier into the proper wording. It asks leading questions, molds him. It does not inform him how literally a Wish is taken, does not do much except for what it always does—spells out the formula, takes the energy from the foundations of the town, and waits for it to be completed.

Perhaps if Richie Tozier had known the importance of specificity, of loopholes and footnotes and impossible clauses—if he had known more about binding contracts—he’d have tailored his Wish more. Had been more concise.

But he did not, which is fine. Not many do. Rarely do the magical beings of Derry meet a person who knows how to ask for something and get exactly what they want.

And so, with the Bridge’s help, Richie Wishes.

 ** _I wish for Eddie,_** he thinks, slicing the wood into a plus sign between the _R_ and the _E. **I wish to see him again, to know where he is, to go back to a time where he was here, and we were all whole, and we were RichieandEddie. I wish for a chance**_ , he adds, almost as an afterthought, breaking off like he’s really speaking out loud, overcome with feeling and desire and a sadness that overwhelms, that tastes like salt on the turtle’s tongue.

There is one beat of hesitance, like the Bridge _knows,_ and maybe it does, and then a cloud passes by the sun. A warbler caws out a warning, startled, and the girl who was thrown into the stream shivers in the chill that follows.

The initials glow, golden and shimmering, light focused on the marking between the letters, on the part that ties them together, and the Wish is granted.

For one moment, it is fine. The sun returns. A robin sings a short tune. The girl steals the boy’s hat she’s with.

Then. _Then:_

The ground shakes, opens up, and the turtle loses his grip on the rock, falling back into the water. There is a violent surge in the current, swirling around him, catching him in its spiral, and he tries to outswim it, tries to make it to shore, or to his other rock—anywhere, really, that is not here when the—

Bright, glowing eyes blink beneath him, yellow, menacing, _evil,_ and the Darkness wakes up.

Finds him.

Fish can’t smile, but this one does, showing off a mouth full of sharp, vicious teeth.

5

Richie shoots up with a gasp, pain hot and heavy at his shoulder, at his temple. It stings, _he stings,_ and he whacks his forehead against the chin of somebody else.

Stan, probably, because he’d been with him when the… the werewolf charged them. Followed them. _Chased_ them. Reminded them that horrors still lurk at home, even when they are hidden, dormant for years.

He doesn’t remember much of it despite it happening—minutes, or hours, or—it couldn’t have been _days,_ could it? It feels like so much but so little time has passed, but he can’t remember shit. One second he was moping in his bathroom, hiding his illegal drug use from his parents and the next he was fuckin’ _running,_ sprinting through the Barrens with an Eddie-turned-werewolf hot on his heels. Both of his worst fears transformed right before his very eyes, right in the place that was supposed to be safe for them.

God. _Fuck._

“Hey, watch it,” the chin snaps, and then he’s being shoved back, gentle but insistent.

The hand is warm against his chest, and the palm leaves an imprint beneath his shirt, hot and blistering. Richie lets it lead him down, feels it remain there for a beat longer than necessary, and pull away, retreating as if it’d been burned.

Stan’d never been good at bedside manner, not really. He’s too dry. Too crass. He didn’t care enough unless you were a select few and even then it really had to be worth it. The flu, maybe, or the time Mike sprained his ankle. Stan doted on him like a loon, wrapping his leg and icing his foot.

Richie has the sneaking suspicion Stan would probably treat him like he was an idiot regardless of the situation, but that’s just who they are as friends. Stan acts like everything is exasperating, like Richie is annoying, but he’s always there. Always his best friend, even if he complains and calls Richie an asshole.

They’re both assholes, and that’s—

_Wait._

That’s not Stan’s voice.

Richie’s eyes fly open. “ _Eddie?_ ” he squawks, taking him in with wide eyes and a chest that fucking _aches._

“Yeah,” Eddie says, brow furrowing. Richie watches him pull his lower lip into his mouth, transfixed on the teeth that dig into the flesh there. “Can you not move, dipshit?”

Richie blinks, eyes roaming over Eddie’s face, and the colors there. He glows, Eddie does, like he’s some sort of painting come to life, da Vinci or Monet or fucking Picasso, with all that yellow. There’s a light that outlines him like an aura, bright and welcoming and really fucking pretty.

“Did you just call me a dipshit?”

“Yep.” Eddie prods at Richie’s arm, touch brushing against the three lines in his skin, tearing through his skin and muscle.

“Do you often call people dipshits?”

“Only the ones who break into my bedroom and bleed all over my floor,” Eddie says. Eddie _teases._ “Can I take your shirt off?”

Richie opens his mouth. Closes it. Feels like a fish out of water, struggling to respond. He’s hot all of a sudden, scorching under Eddie’s dark-eyed gaze. “What?”

“You’re bleeding a lot,” Eddie says. “I could get a better look at… at whatever this is if you’re, you know.” He coughs. “Not wearing a shirt.”

His cheeks flush a rosy pink, and he looks away from him for the space of three breaths, then catches Richie’s gaze again, holding it. It makes him feel heady, dizzy, and he wonders if the implications of it—the way it makes him feel, a warmth swirling in his gut—mean anything to anyone but him. He wonders what Eddie remembers, _if_ Eddie remembers.

Wonders if Eddie knows him or if Richie is just a fucking stranger that’s crawled through his window.

“Oh,” Richie says. “Um.”

“I can just roll the sleeve up,” Eddie replies quickly, “if you don’t—”

“Nuh,” Richie starts, clears his throat. “No, it’s. It’s fine. You can—I—” He sniffs, taps his tongue on his lower lip, right at the center. “I don’t think I can move my arm very well, is all.”

“I can…” Eddie shifts on the bed and for the first time Richie realizes he’s hovering over him, his knees on either side of his legs, like he’s sitting in his lap. “Here,” he murmurs. “Can I…?”

“Uh, yeah,” Richie allows.

His stomach tenses and his heart pounds and Eddie’s fingers are cold where they curl around the hem of his shirt. His pulse is at his bellybutton, he thinks, jumping where Eddie touches. He breathes raggedly, feels every second tick by agonizingly slow, and then Eddie is—

“This is gonna hurt probably,” he tells him, apologetic. “Just… can you… hold still, okay?”

Eddie tugs the shirt up and over his head as gently as he can, but Richie still feels the fabric rip at the tender skin of his shoulder. Hears it, too, right in his ear, and grits his teeth against the irritation, the _pain_ that shoots through him, but nothing compares to the jolt of Eddie’s touch against his bare chest, prodding at the wound that runs longer and deeper than he first realized. It was hard to focus on the severity of it when it was happening, the werewolf closing in, digging its claws into him.

It got him pretty good, is all he knows. It’ll leave a gnarly scar if it ever heals.

Richie bites down on his cheek, watching Eddie’s forehead wrinkle as he traces the length of one scratch, deep and jagged. Can he feel the way his heart beats? Can Richie control it so it doesn’t thump like that?

Eddie taps his thumb at the edge of the claw mark at the center of his chest, where it thins, tapering out. “What the fuck happened to you?” he asks, voice soft. Slow.

He breathes, deep, steady, and focuses on the poster behind Eddie’s head. It’s surprisingly telling of his interests, and Richie thinks maybe he’s seen it before, in that very spot. It’s old, faded with time and sunlight, the X-Men from, like, five years ago, maybe. Wolverine is front and center. He can’t make out the rest of them; he’d never been that interested in those comics, more of a Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman fan himself.

“You hit me in the head,” Richie answers.

“I know, I was there,” Eddie replies. “I meant before that, you idiot.”

“ _Again_ with the name-calling,” Richie snarks at him, averting his gaze. Eddie’s staring at him intently, switching from his face to his shoulder and back, and Richie hates it, the way he feels caught, stuck like a fly in a trap. “Hey, ow, did you just— _pinch_ —”

Eddie does it again, digging his nails into the space above his elbow. “Answer the question.”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Richie blurts out, and then, “I’d like to go back to you hitting me _over the head_ with a—was it a baseball bat? Can we go back to that?”

“You broke into my bedroom at—” Eddie checks his watch, scrunches up his nose, considers the time like he’s counting numbers in his head. “Three in the morning. What was I supposed to do, make you breakfast?”

“That woulda been nice,” Richie replies, blinking up at Eddie, who rolls his eyes. He grins at him, languid and easy, but everything is like that with Eddie. Simple. _Relaxed._ Even after all this time. “Hey, what time is it?”

“Um.” Eddie looks at his watch again. “About six. You’ve been out for… I didn’t mean to hit you that hard,” he backtracks. “But try me. You don’t know what I’ll believ—”

“Is it the twentieth?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “It’s only been a few hours.”

“November twentieth.”

“ _Yes,_ it’s—”

Richie licks his lips, inhales shakily. “Happy birthday,” he breathes out, head spinning.

Eddie’s hand slips over the thicker claw mark, sending a burst of pain up Richie’s neck to his ear. Asks, “How’d you know that?”

It’s excruciating, how Eddie is looking at him, how he’s touching him, how he’s fallen back on his legs. How he’s all over Richie, like this is normal, like this is who they are, who they have been. Like they haven’t been separated for years, like he’s always been there.

Richie answers, “Because I _know_ you, Eds.”

“Don’t call me that,” Eddie says immediately, without the usual heat. Still, the typical response sends a thrill of familiarity up Richie’s spine. He clings to it. To Eddie, just a bit, who clears his throat and presses on, moving past what Richie would surely latch onto if their roles were reversed. “What’d happened? Like, should I disinfect this?”

Eddie has always been remarkably good at preservation, at knowing what to focus on and when. He’d patched Ben up pretty well, not even that overwhelmed by the, you know, blood and guts and mess of the whole thing, out in the alley by the pharmacy. He’s probably reeling now, uncomfortable by Richie knowing his name and his birthday and the whole climbing in through his window thing that, in retrospect, is incredibly fucking creepy, but—

Look at him.

Worrying over Richie’s unexplainable injury, the blood, the dirt—all of it. Dr. Kaspbrak, at your service.

He’s a whole stranger, lying in his bed, talking to him, bleeding out, and Eddie is… Eddie’s here to _help._ He’s always been there, ready with his little fanny pack and his extensive knowledge of medical procedures, word vomiting whatever he thought was cool, or interesting, or rubbing alcohol on Richie’s scrapes so _you won’t catch a disease, Richie, I won’t be friends with you if you’re dismembered because you didn’t wash your fucking hands._

“I’m, uh,” Richie starts. He wipes his sweaty palms on his jeans, matted with mud and stained with grass at the knees. He’s surprised Eddie hasn’t complained about them yet, but he doesn’t know this version of him, does he? He doesn’t know Richie, either, but he’s still… he’s still _here._ And Richie can do something about that. Can introduce himself, at least. “I’m—do you know who I am, by the way?”

Eddie blinks, jolting back like he’s been shocked, and then he peers closer, almost nose to nose with Richie, who can’t exactly gauge the distance between them. He seems so close yet so far. Richie can smell the mint of his toothpaste, the floral undercurrent of his shampoo.

His finger presses lightly to the bump at Richie’s temple, where the arm of his glasses digs in uncomfortably. Eddie did that, probably, but even that assumption could be incorrect. Richie’d been beaten up a bunch this morning and it’s really unclear who did what.

Most of his injuries are from the wolf though, burning scrapes at his palms and knees and deep puncture wounds spanning the length of his upper body.

“Yeah,” Eddie replies eventually, the black of his pupil expanding, widening to hide the pretty brown of his iris, warm and golden. That means something, doesn’t it, means that you like what you see? Richie may have a concussion, but he thinks his eyes are doing the same thing; it’s like all he can see is Eddie. All he’s _ever_ been able to see is Eddie. “I think so.”

“We were… we were friends,” Richie tells him. “Before.”

Eddie licks his lips, twists one of Richie’s curls around his finger. “Right. I didn’t know I had…” He cuts himself off, smiles, and splays his other hand on Richie’s chest. “So. You gonna tell me what happened to you?”

Richie opens his mouth, still without a reasonable excuse for this fucking mess—he’s about halfway through the mental gymnastics it would take to blame, like, a rogue housecat—when Eddie pinches him again, right where it hurts the most, the little shit.

“Don’t lie to me,” Eddie snaps. “You always make that face when you’re going to lie and you literally _can’t_ lie to me. I’ll know.”

“Will you?” Richie asks, batting Eddie’s hands away. “You’re violent, did you know that? Were you always like this?”

Eddie twists his finger just enough to smart and then for some inexplicable reason—Richie can’t think straight—their hands clasp, intertwine. “Don’t change the subject, Tra—” He blinks, Richie’s heart jumps, but the sentence is not finished, like Eddie can’t make the word come out.

 _Trashmouth,_ Richie wants to say. _Call me it. No one’s called me that in a long, long time. Call me it._ But that won’t leave his mouth either, stuck to the tip of his tongue, like he can’t exactly… tell him. Like he needs to get there on his own.

Eddie coughs. “Don’t change the subject,” he tries again, and his mouth moves like he wants to say more, like he knows he _can._ “When you’re locked up with no one but your fucking _mom,_ you kind of don’t remember how to socialize. Forgive my transgressions.”

“Transgressions,” Richie repeats, swallowing a snort.

“SAT words are important,” Eddie replies. “Now answer the question. _What_ did this?”

“Can you get your grubby fingers out of my injuries, you heathen?” Richie retorts back. “Did you wash your hands before you touched me?”

Eddie scoffs. “Of course I did, you—you—” He breaks off with a huff and it looks like, for a moment, he wants to apply pressure to the thick lines. Blood slithers, sticky and wet, down this side of his ribcage, no doubt staining Eddie’s bedsheets. “Not everyone is as gross as you, Trashmouth.”

 _There we go,_ Richie thinks, much calmer than his body, which seems to move on its own. His heart thumps, flips, and catches in his throat, such fierce actions that he moves with it, all but possessed.

Eddie feels it, too, if his face is anything to go by. He looks at Richie, like _really_ looks at Richie, with a quiet deliberation in his gaze, one that hugs and holds Richie’s entire being. Entire _soul._ It is almost like he’s cataloging everything that makes Richie who he is, filing away the skin (dry), his mouth (chapped), his ears and his glasses and the way his hair is currently matted to his scalp, not as clean as he would’ve liked it if he’d known he were seeing Eddie again.

He has not put his best foot forward, but.

When has he ever, right?

“I’m, uh,” Richie starts, voice catching, breath hitching. Every one of Eddie’s touches feels thoughtful now. Unhurried, like he is also committing the way he feels to memory. His fingers tighten around Richie’s, smooth where he is hard, rough. On top of the cuts and scrapes, Richie has a handful of calluses. He takes up a lot of different hobbies and drops them after a few weeks, but they always leave their mark. “I’m a lot cleaner than I used to be,” he says. “Not that you can tell right now, but I swear. I wash my hands every time I use the bathroom.”

“That’s…” Eddie wrinkles his nose, scrunching up in a way that makes Richie want to pinch his cheeks, or like touch his face to Eddie’s. “I mean, that’s good to know, but did you really not wash your hands _every time?_ ”

“Sometimes I didn’t,” Richie admits, “but I do now! I’m better than I was when I was thirteen. Honest.”

Eddie’s eyelashes flutter against him, long and dark. “I’m gonna take that with a grain of salt,” he says. “I don’t know how true that is, and you’re the one telling me, so…”

“I can’t believe you don’t trust me.”

“I haven’t seen you in, like, half a decade,” Eddie retorts. “Sorry I don’t take everything you say as gospel.”

Richie sniffs. “Well, you should,” he replies. “I may be the worst, but I’m not a liar, Edward.”

“Ew, don’t fucking call me that,” Eddie says immediately.

“It’s your name, isn’t it?” Richie asks, biting down on his lip, fighting the grin that’s threatening to spread. He’s fucking _giddy,_ the emotion swirling through his belly like butterflies. “What should I call you?”

“Eddie is fine,” he replies. “Just Eddie. Not Eds, or Spaghetti, or—or—any other nonsensical thing you can come up with.”

“Okay.” Richie runs his tongue over his teeth. “ _Just_ Eddie.”

Eddie goes to take his hand away, but Richie refuses, gripping tighter, and Eddie uses their interlocked fingers to punch at him. “I meant _Eddie._ Only call me Eddie.”

“Mhm, okay, Eds,” Richie agrees.

“ _Richie,_ ” Eddie snaps.

A thrill goes up his spine. “Yes?”

The heat dies from the brown of Eddie’s eyes, dimming the color slightly, his fake anger fading as he looks at down at him. At Richie’s body, bruised and bloody, still without explanation. At where they’re linked, Richie’s palm growing sweatier, clammier, by the second. Eddie’s skin is paler than Richie’s, which is an odd combination of red and blue, slightly darker, though not by much—it _is_ almost winter, and Richie has never really absorbed the sun as much as the others have, always a sunburnt mess.

Eddie, if he remembers, used to tan nicely, a golden sort of color. A summer child, always, who loved the quarry and laying in the sun. He’d curl up like a cat next to Richie, or on top of Mike, and sleep for hours if he could. Richie would always let him, content to rest there with him, flipping through comics or books Ben recommended or just, like, fuckin’ cloud watch, listening to the others.

He watches the long line of Eddie’s throat, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. “Where have you been this whole time?” He holds his gaze, face heating up splendidly, red, red, _red_ at the apples of his cheeks to the tips of his ears. “Why would you leave me alone? I thought—”

_Thought what? Tell me what you thought. Tell me, tell me, tell—_

Eddie shakes his head, sentence trailing off, and flicks his eyes back, waiting expectantly.

“Would you believe me if I—”

“I need you to stop asking if I’d believe you, or saying that I won’t,” Eddie interrupts, soft and firm. “Of course I’ll believe you. I’ve believed everything you’ve ever told me, even if it was fucking stupid. Like that time I thought you were a magician because of a stupid cereal box.”

Richie giggles, just once, remembering. “I told you I could make you invisible and then paid Stan five dollars to go along with it,” he says. “That was funny.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Sometimes you are and sometimes you push too much and go too far.” He rubs his nose. “Still funny though. Just mean.”

“Right.”

“So, like, I’ll believe what you say,” Eddie continues. “You don’t have to preface it with, like, a disclaimer on the off-chance it sounds implausible or… or… off-color, or anything.”

Richie wants to echo the words he’s using. Wants to parrot back in a dumb accent _preface,_ and _disclaimer,_ and _implausible._ Wants to mock the use of _off-color_ because who fucking says that? What seventeen-year-old boy talks like this?

But he doesn’t. He knows why.

“I didn’t choose to,” Richie answers him quietly.

He feels like he’s whispering and maybe he is. He feels kind of ashamed that he’s let all this time go by, that he didn’t try more, try _harder._ How could he just _give up_ on Eddie? How was it even possible for him to stop looking, to stop hunting? Bill never gave up on Georgie, stupidly optimistic and infuriatingly persistent. Richie gave it less than a year before calling it quits, disappointed and sad and really fucking lonely, because as much as Stan is important to him, as much as Stan is his best friend, he doesn’t _get_ him the way Eddie does. Did. Doesn’t _complete_ him, make him feel like more than just a bunch of broken pieces.

Stan is amazing. Stan is great. Richie would die for Stan every day of the week, but he isn’t Eddie. Will never be Eddie.

Honestly Stan is probably glad for that because he hates most of Richie’s ramblings, even if he lets him do it. Eddie always found him— _them—_ enthralling, hanging on his every word.

There’s a distinct difference between them. Always has been. It’s the same as how there’s a slight rift between him and Bill, one that will never heal, no matter how hard they try, how much they force it. A small part of Richie will never forgive Bill for what happened at that house. For what happened _after._ Logically, it’s not his fault. No one knew Sonia would do what she did, or that Eddie would break his arm, or that a real ass fucking clown would be there to eat their faces off, but the petty, tiny, young part of him blames Bill.

They’re friends, but they’re not. Richie will never hang out with him alone, but he’ll show up when someone else is there, and he’ll be present, be someone Bill trusts and needs, but it’s not like he’s going to pick Richie either. Not when he’s got Bev and Mike.

And they’re fine, the way they are. Fractured but as whole as they can be. Losers forever, sticking together.

“I didn’t choose to,” he repeats. “I would never just—I wouldn’t _leave_ you, you know that, right? You’re… I’m…” _Obsessed with you._ “I wouldn’t. I didn’t. I tried, and your mom was… she made us all leave, that summer. No one was allowed to see you, and then the… the…” _Does he remember? Fuck it._ “The clown won, I guess, and we just… We realized how the adults never fucking cared,” he says. “They forgot. Everyone in this town _forgets_ until It comes back, and Stan didn’t want us to. He didn’t think it was over, so we made this pact at the quarry, and I did it twice, for you, too, and—”

“The clown,” Eddie echoes, brow furrowed.

“Yeah, do you—let me see your hand,” Richie babbles.

Eddie blindly flips his palm over. There’s a scar there, looks like it just reopened, raised with new skin, pink and healthy. Their hands had bled a few months ago when Sally went missing.

A reminder, like It was saying _hello._

Richie runs his finger along it, then says, “I never forgot you, but I forgot some things about you. Like where you lived. And it didn’t matter much, I didn’t think, because I thought you had moved away.”

“But you found me today,” Eddie says.

“Yeah.”

Eddie asks, “How?”

“You know the Kissing Bridge?” Richie asks. Eddie nods. “You know what they say about it?”

“That it’s, like, magical, right?” Eddie provides. “My mom thinks it’s a bunch of bullshit, but I guess I don’t know much about it. It’s nice to think it is, though.”

“No, it is,” Richie tells him. “It… it’s magic. It works. It led me straight to you.”

“It did? Why? How?”

Richie shifts, uncomfortable, and says, “I wished for you.”

“For me,” Eddie repeats.

“Yeah. For you.”

“You wished,” Eddie says slowly, “for me.”

“Yes, I carved our initials together on the bridge and I wished that I’d be able to see you again.”

“Why?”

Richie’s heart stutters in his chest, furious and painful. It feels like he could break a rib. “I missed you.”

Their hands, still held together, get caught between them, and Richie’s arm snaps at the elbow as Eddie surges forward, wrapping himself around him. He’s not very careful, jostling his entire body, sending a surge of hot pain through Richie as he hits his shoulder. He doesn’t seem to care that he’ll get blood on him, doesn’t care that Richie still hasn’t answered his initial question.

All he seems focused on his hugging him without letting go. His legs hook around his hips, feet digging into the space above his tailbone, and he nestles his head in the crook of Richie’s neck, choosing the unharmed side. His nose is cold against his skin, his hair soft, and Richie breathes out, stilted and relaxed for the first time in what feels like years.

He ignores the claw marks and hugs him back, holding him as tightly as he can without giving away that he’s actually remarkably uncomfortable.

“I missed you too,” Eddie breathes. Goosebumps emerge where his lips are, right at his collarbone. Richie shivers.

6

On the other side of town, Georgie Denbrough wakes up before his mother does her rounds, knocking on her sons’ bedroom doors.

He jolts awake, screaming—blood-curdling, agonizing, _painful—_ and Bill is in the room before he even registers that he’s up himself. He trips over his feet, socks bunched at the toes, and steadies himself at the foot of Georgie’s bed, hand gripped on the white metal there, twisted into an intricate design.

“Hey,” he says, voice thick with sleep, “are you okay?”

Georgie doesn’t answer as much as he cries, big, heaving sobs that sound like they’re taking a lot out of him. Bill hasn’t heard him like this in years, not since before he’d went missing, but he’d been a baby then. Four. Five. Afraid of his own shadow.

It’s unnerving.

Bill gets closer, rubbing at his eyes, and stops dead in his tracks.

“Georgie.” He speaks slowly, so as not to scare him. “What—what happened to your arm?”

“I duh-duh-don’t know,” Georgie wails. Coughs. Chokes. “I had a dream that—that—” He swallows roughly. “I had a dream and then I woke up and it felt like—it felt like my arm was being ripped from my body, and—and—”

“What was the dream about?” Bill asks, sitting down as close to him as he can manage.

Georgie cries harder, shrieking gasps that are all but pulled from his throat, and Bill can hear the terrified thudding of his heart, feels the fear, electric and quick, that fills him up, like it had every day Georgie was missing. He is focused on the blood— _so much blood—_ at the arm of Georgie’s pajama shirt, soaking through the material, filling the air with a tangy, salty smell. His arm lies oddly at his side, flat and dead, almost, like Georgie no longer has any control over it.

Bill leans forward and gags. The blood makes him nauseous.

“I don’t know,” Georgie says finally, still worked up. It’s hard to understand him, but Bill’s been trained to do that, to figure out what someone is saying, having had a stutter for most of his life. “It was raining, and I was playing outside, and my boat fell into the sewer, and I _had_ to get it because we made it together, me and you.”

“Okay,” Bill says.

“But there was a clown there, too, and he had my boat, and he was talking about this carnival, and I know I shouldn’t talk to strangers, but it felt so real, and…” Georgie coughs, wet and heavy. “When I went to take the boat back, the clown just—he—It— _bit me,_ right at the shoulder, and I was bleeding everywhere and… and… Bill, tell me I’m not bleeding—”

He can’t. Bill can’t tell him that.

“Does it hurt?” he asks instead.

“Yeah,” Georgie answers. “It hurts a lot.”

“Okay,” Bill repeats. He inches up the bed, careful not to disrupt his brother, and lets his hands hover over him. “I’m going to check it, alright? I’m sorry if it makes you uncomfortable.”

Georgie nods, sniffling. He fists the comforter on his other side, takes in a deep breath, and then seems to hold it, waiting.

Bill is as careful as he can be, rolling Georgie’s sleeve up. It’s drenched, heavy and wet, and Bill’s skin absorbs the blood. It stains his fingertips, gets in the whirls and whorls. Georgie hisses as he gets closer to the shoulder and Bill decides to do it all quick and painless, pulling up.

Georgie hiccups.

Bill swallows back bile.

The arm is _literally_ hanging by a thread. Four or five of them exactly, pieces of shredded muscle and skin pulled taut and thin. It looks just like Georgie explained, jagged teeth marks like he’d been bitten, bruising all around the area, inflamed and red and dark. The bone is cracked right down the middle, gnawed at almost, and blood gushes out, a thick stream of it that will never come out of the sheets or the clothes again.

“Are you sure it was a dream?” Bill asks, fighting to keep his voice from breaking. From shaking. From telling Georgie more than he needs to know.

_Where are their parents?_

“I didn’t go anywhere,” Georgie tells him. “I was _asleep._ ”

Bill chews on his lower lip, accidentally breaking the skin there. He swallows back the metallic taste, runs his tongue over the split. It stings. “Are you _sure?_ ” he asks. “You didn’t sleepwalk?”

“I don’t sleepwalk,” Georgie argues. “Why? Bill, what is—why does my arm _hurt?_ ”

His cheeks are wet with tears, the whites of his eyes red. He’s breathing better now, though, steadier. Acting less like he’s going to vomit from lack of oxygen.

Bill says, “Because your arm was torn out of the socket.” Pauses. “Like in your dream.”

“It—what?”

“No, don’t sit up. You’ll irritate it more,” Bill instructs. “I don’t… how do you feel? Lightheaded? Dizzy? You’re losing a lot of blood. I don’t know what…” He trails off before he can say _to do,_ because that is not what his brother needs to hear right now.

Bill always knows what to do. _Always._ He’ll figure it out.

“I feel fine,” Georgie says. “More scared than anything else.”

“What? Are you sure?” Bill presses his palm to his forehead, feels him for a fever. He does not have one, though he is sweaty at his hairline. “Georgie, don’t lie.”

“I’m not,” Georgie says. He ignores Bill as he splutters, trying to force him back down. “I feel fine. Normal. Honest.”

Bill frowns. “You’re _bleeding._ ”

“Yeah, I know that,” Georgie replies. “I think you should wrap it, and then…” He presses his lips together, white against his rapidly paling skin.

“And then what?” Bill asks, pulling his own shirt up and over his head. He presses it to Georgie’s arm, ties it tight.

Georgie lifts his hand, lies it flat on his shoulder, and starts to hum.

“Uh,” Bill blurts. “I don’t think that’s going to—”

“ _Shh,_ ” Georgie snaps.

He hums again, and again, and _again,_ the same tune for the same length of time, and his skin begins to _glow._ Strings of golden light materialize out of nowhere, twisting and twirling and moving, outlining Georgie’s arm like he’s some kind of drawing. The sixth time he does it, the colorful lines seep into him, brightening so much Bill has to shut his eyes, and then they disappear, leaving nothing but darkness in their wake.

When Bill looks again, the blood is gone, smell included, and Georgie’s arm is stitched back together, skin grown anew, bones connected. It looks like it never happened in the first place.

“What?”

Georgie rolls his shoulder out, making a face, and replies, “It’s the only thing I remember. Just emptiness and then… that song. Then I was home.”

“It’s a healing song?” Bill asks.

“I don’t know what it does,” Georgie admits. “I didn’t know if it would work. I just had a hunch.”

Bill peers at his arm, stunned but not confused. A lot of weird things happen in Derry. This is just another one of them.

“That’s wild,” Bill says, reaching his thumb out to brush against where he’d seen the grisly bite. Now there is nothing but smooth skin.

“I know,” Georgie says, “but I have a feeling that something bad is about to happen.” The color is coming back into his cheeks. “No. Something bad _is_ happening, Billy, but I don’t know what.”

There is a hard, heavy knock on Georgie’s door. “Time to get up!” their mother shouts. “Breakfast in fifteen!”

Georgie holds Bill’s gaze for a second, shrugs, and slides out of bed, padding over to his dresser to start getting ready for school.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: has to go watched tangled again for the millionth time this year so i can attempt to link both of these plots together. send help


	5. i've always yearned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “There’s more to it than just me missing you,” he admits. “Me trusting you isn’t the only thing that hasn’t changed.”
> 
> Eddie stops what he’s doing, fishing line wrapped around his fingers, and doesn’t hide the fact that he’s staring at him through the reflection. “What else?” he asks. This feels important.
> 
> “The last time I saw you, you were twelve,” Richie parrots, “and when you were twelve, I loved you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if you've read this already- I had a weird technical difficulty on my end that made it hard to access? Like, I could not find it at all. Anyway, same notes as before:
> 
> 1) One day this will follow my Tangled outline plan, but for now, these idiots are doing whatever they feel like. I anticipate next chapter will be smoother sailing for me in that regard.
> 
> 2) I definitely did not explain accurately how to stitch yourself up at home, so please do not do so unless you've actually retained any information from the article that I skimmed. It seems awful???? I cannot inflict pain on myself or others so #goEddie 
> 
> 3) Chapter count went up and is not actually correct because I have no idea how long this will be and I suck! :) Once upon a time this was supposed to be just a rly long oneshot oops
> 
> 4) Link to a playlist of all non-Tangled songs can be found [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0OjYcmm724GK2lJZ0mKCCE?si=lM3-wWs9R6OaE2uMy1p0qg). This fic relies heavily on music for some reason

1

Normally, when Bev sleeps, she does not dream—or, if she does, she doesn’t remember. Not the contents, not the people or the places or things. She just remembers feelings, and colors, and a general sense of trepidation. Like something is bigger than her, biding its time. Waiting. Watching. 

Every time she wakes, it is like being plunged into ice cold water, frozen and aware. She cannot place the fear that curdles in her stomach, but it is familiar, almost. She is intimately aware of it, knows how it works, knows how _she_ will work when faced with something that scares her. She is action; she is movement; she pushes forward to get past it, knowing there is something greater, something better, on the other side. 

On a very mediocre, very boring weeknight, Bev falls asleep like she always does. She washes her face, and she brushes her teeth, and twists her short hair into braids so that it falls in waves the next morning when she takes them out. She locks her door, gets in bed, and reads half a chapter of a book she is not interested in. She forgets to turn off her light, the novel open on her chest, and her muted dreams, full of ugly, horrifying colors—darks, reds, blues, yellows, gleaming, glaring white—twist and turn like the roots of old trees. 

Clocks all over Derry chime midnight. Time moves, the earth rotates, and another day has passed. 

It is the first minute of November twentieth, and Bev Marsh dreams—of a summer she hasn’t been able to fully remember, a boy with fanny pack full of medical supplies, and a clown.

2

_Almost there, almost there—left, left—_

Stan bursts through someone’s yard, tramples what’s left of their garden, pulls branches and leaves from their hedges, and sprints down the dark, deserted street. His feet ache, and his throat is dry, and his lungs are on fire, but he cannot stop. If he stops... _if he stops..._

He isn’t sure what will happen, if anything. He just knows he can’t. Not until he gets there. 

It feels longer on foot than it does on their bikes. He can see the farm in the distance, the stables and the coop and the looming house itself, more friendly in the oppressive darkness than anything Stan has ever seen. He pushes himself farther, strains his calves, and feels his ankles shriek under his weight. He has never run this fast before. Has never had a reason to, not even the first time. It feels different now, _real,_ and he allows himself a moment to feel guilty for not turning back for Richie. He knows what happens when you do that. He’s read the stories. He knows the myth. You turn around and you don’t make it out alive.

 _And Richie is alive,_ he thinks desperately. Puts it out into the world. Makes it true. There are a lot of things that could kill Richie Tozier, and a fucking shape-shifting clown is not one of them.

The porch light is on ahead, a hazy yellow flickering in and out, and Stan skids to a stop at the sight of Mike, curled in on himself on the steps. A steaming mug is held in his hands, balanced atop his knees. Another sits at his side. 

“Mike?”

His lips quirk. “You seem surprised to see me at my own house.”

“It’s,” Stan starts, checking his watch, but it’s Mike’s voice that follows. 

“I know,” says Mike. “It’s late. Early, depending on how you look at it.” He taps the step beside him with a foot—no shoes, just socks. “Sit. I made you tea.” 

Stan squints at him, remembering how Eddie’d just appeared before, and tries to find inconsistencies with this Mike and the one he knows. There are none, just deep, dark bags under his eyes, but it is still enough to make Stan pause. “How’d you know I was coming?” 

“I didn’t know it was going to be you,” Mike replies. There is a furrow between his brows. He looks tired. “I just knew someone would be here.” 

_I needed someone to know I was coming here,_ Richie’d said. 

“How?” Stan asks, climbing beside him. His lower body aches as he settles into a sitting position. He takes the mug, warms his hands, and brings it close to his face. Camomile. 

Mike shifts, glancing out and then over. “I was asleep,” he says, “and then I wasn’t. Something woke me up. Something told me to be here.” 

Stan burns his tongue on his tea, lets it sit in his mouth, in his cheeks. Swallows. Says, “When? How long have you been sitting out here?” 

“Not that long,” he says. “I woke up at—“

“Two,” Stan guesses. “Two-thirty?”

“Yeah,” Mike says. He places his cup next to him, pulls a twig from Stan’s hair, and brushes his thumb against his cheek. “What happened to you?” The pad of his finger gleams in the low light, covered in blood. Stan hadn’t realized. 

“The clubhouse,” Stan replies, bringing his own hand up to his face. It’s wet and sticky. “Richie and I...” He presses his fingers together, stares at the redness. Opens his palm, sees the thin line of the scar they all share, jagged and pink, freshly healed. It opened up recently, like he’d sliced through it with the soda bottle that warm day, not four years ago. “Do you remember much about the summer before high school?” 

“Bits and pieces,” Mike admits. “Not a lot, but enough.” 

Stan remembers because he made them swear it. Richie remembers because he wished for it. The rest of them remember because of the pact they made, but the body acts in mysterious ways, and memory is an interesting thing. Look at the adults here. They see, but they don’t act like they do. They know, but they ignore. The whole town—it’s one big mind clusterfuck. 

“I think it’s happening again,” Stan says. 

“I know,” Mike replies. “It is.” 

Stan wants to tell him more, but it feels like a betrayal of Richie, so he keeps his mouth shut. He drinks more tea, feels less relaxed than he did before, and presses a knuckle to the headache brewing at his temple. “Has anything weird happened to you lately?”

“You mean besides the voice telling me to wake up and wait here for you?”

“Yeah. Besides that.” 

“A bird,” Mike says after a moment of deliberation. “Big, with orange fluff. It just stares at me sometimes, like it’s making sure I’m still here.”

“There’s no bird like that in Maine,” Stan replies immediately, mind flipping through the book in his mind, the catalog of avians he’s seen. He and his dad used to like doing that together, bird-watching. “It is coming after us again, I think, or It is going to if It hasn’t already.” 

Mike knocks his knee against Stan’s as he turns to face him. “You said you came from the clubhouse with Richie. What happened?”

“The clown,” Stan says. “The wolf.” _Eddie blaming him._ “Whatever his fear is now.” 

“It attacked?” 

“I think whatever the voices are,” Stan begins, mulling it over in his head, trying to make sense of something so completely nonsensical, something that doesn’t _belong._ “I don’t think they’re particularly friendly. I think they want us to listen, but we shouldn’t. I think—“ 

Richie, terrified and dirty, high and miserable: _I think_ I’m _the reason It’s back._

“Stan,” Mike broaches, careful, “where’s Richie?” 

He drinks more tea, thinks about the look on Richie’s face, thinks about wording and wishes and the stupid bridge. Thinks about how stricken he’d seemed when It-Eddie said he didn’t try hard enough. Stan smacks his lips, curls his tongue over his teeth, and asks, “Do you still have all of our phone numbers?” 

“Yeah, in a book.” Mike scrambles up when Stan stands. His sock gets caught on a wooden board, ripping the fabric by his toe. “Don’t you think it’s too early to be calling his house, though?” 

“Sure is,” Stan agrees, holding the door as it shuts quietly behind him, “but I’m not calling his house.” 

3

Ben rubs his hand against the fogged up mirror, squinting at his reflection as his face grows clearer. His hair, wet, stands up in the front, and drops of water slide down his cheeks, warm, and white, covered in thick, soggy bandages that—

Wait.

He blinks, confused, certain there is still soap in his eye, clinging to his lashes, fucking with his vision, or he’s spent too long reading that book he’d taken out of the library, each page darker and scarier than the last.

But the mummy stares back at him, even after he closes his eyes and counts to ten. 

It copies his every movement: a blink and then another; a hand lifting, a finger brushing down the length of his jaw. 

Ben is certain he does not look like this—he _can’t_ , it’s physically impossible—but beneath the pads of his fingers he feels the soppy, soaked fabric begin to dry, clinging to his face. He digs into it before it can stick, tries to pry it off, and hisses through his teeth at the sting he feels. It is like he is trying to tear his skin off the skull. His nails scratch and scratch, searching for purchase, for the edge of the bandage he can see so fucking _clearly_ right there in front of him—

The mummy smiles across from him, bandages splitting in two, staining red at the edges as it laughs at him. “Fat boy,” it says, using Ben’s voice though his mouth does not move. It’s pitched a little, higher than it has been, like he’s been transported years back. “Fat boy, fat boy, fat boy,” he-It-the mummy sings, crazed and frenzied and insistent. “You can lose all the weight you want, but you’ll still be a little piggy!” 

“Shut up,” Ben snaps. 

“No one will love you,” it goes on, even as Ben’s fingers scramble against his face, tearing and pulling and _ripping._ He feels like he can’t breathe, like he’s never been able to breathe, like these bandages were tied around him before his time and he was shoved in a box and buried six feet under and no one is coming to save him, no one has noticed he’s missing, no one has bothered to check and—

There it is again. The laugh, but it’s different from his own. Squeaky. Borderline insane. He recognizes it. He knows it, but from where? Why does it make his stomach churn and his palms sweat? Why is his heart racing? What does his body know that his mind doesn’t?

“Oh, Benny,” his voice says, “no one will ever love you. No one will ever want you, not the girl, who’s had everyone else, not those boys, who’ve always had each other—but I will. I want you. I love you. I missed you! I’ve been so _loooooonely..._ Won’t you play with me, Benny-boy? Won’t you come over?”

The mirror shatters when Ben’s fist makes contact, and he’s never punched anything before, so the pain that accompanies it sends a shock up his forearm. His elbow throbs. He grits his teeth, eyes stinging, and breathes in and out as slowly and contained as possible. 

In the pieces of glass that remain, cracked and warped, Ben watches the mummy unravel its bandages strip by strip. Pale, chubby cheeks emerge, then the rest of the face, the white skin, and the acne-spotted chin and nose, the eyes, smaller than they ought to be, surrounded by all that fat, the neck, the hair, the forehead, two sizes too big...

Thirteen year old Ben Hanscom stares back at him, sometimes smaller, sometimes larger, like he’s looking into a funhouse mirror. Current Ben, one year away from adulthood, scowls, lets the anger fuel him, and pulls his arm back, winding up. 

Ben disappears before he can inflict more damage, shimmers away in a flash of light—but not before Ben spots him. It. Whatever. A clown replaces his own face, orange hair sprouting about his head, eerie smile cutting through his cheeks, red from paint or blood or both, mixing with the bright white of the rest of his face. One eye winks, and fingers flutter, and a giggle sounds, loud in his ear, like the thing is behind him.

He whirls around, looking, heart in his ears, his ass, his throat, and finds nothing but the shower curtain. He pulls it back to check, to see if It is there, hiding behind it, but there is nothing but soap in the drain, a shampoo bottle he never capped, and an empty cucumber-scented body wash. He will not end up throwing that out for another three days.

When he turns back around, his breath whistles through his teeth as he gasps. 

The mirror is in perfect condition, like he hadn’t busted it. Blood— _his_ blood—stains the porcelain of the sink, tiny droplets on the lip, the faucet. In the reflection, he sees the face he’s been looking at for years, thinner and older and less unappealing, thanks to track and salads and generally ignoring his mother’s cooking, and he sees it with three scratches, deep and red and bleeding, like his nails were claws.

 _Come play,_ the voice whispers. A coo. A beg. Come-hither, almost. _You know where to find me._

He presses his fingers to his face, to that wound. Sees the broken skin of his knuckles, dark red and brown, bruises blooming down his fingers. _How is he supposed to explain this?_

 _Easy,_ he thinks. _It’s Derry._

It’s always Derry.

4

_She is at Mr. Keene’s, uncomfortable and cramping, staring at rows and rows of feminine hygiene products. She is exasperated, and confused, and she doesn’t really know the difference between a light flow and a heavy one, and should she get tampons? Would those hurt? Are pads better?_

_Not for the first time, she wishes her mother were around. It’s not like she can ask her dad about this stuff; he thinks her growing up, growing older, is inherently bad, like something she can control and refuses to, just to piss him off._

_If she could stop it, she would. Doesn’t he know that?_

_She grabs a box, any box, and marches out of the aisle. It will have to do. She’ll make it work, just like she does everything else._

_The store is blessedly empty, thank god. This is embarrassing on so many levels and she hasn’t even managed to figure out what she’s going to say to Mr. Keene or, god forbid, Greta Bowie, who works here part-time and has awful interpersonal skills and had her minions dump wet garbage all over her on the last day of school._

_And, of course, because there’s no such thing as Bev Marsh having good luck, she hears Greta’s voice, a chipper, “See you later!” like she’s not the world’s worst person, and she ducks into a different aisle to avoid confrontation._

_Bev stops short, like a deer in headlights, hides the box behind her back, and stares at three boys by the bandaids. One is tall, blonde, and lanky, the other is Bill Denbrough, and the last is shorter, clutching medical tape and gauze and an entire thing of hydrogen peroxide. He drops something._

_They stare at each other, and Bev feels her heart racing in her ears, but only for a moment. She feels comforted here, with them. Safe, almost. Like she knows them and they’re friends and this is where she is supposed to be, but she’s only ever interacted with Bill, who she kissed in a play in third grade, and—_

_“Y-you okay?” he asks, and he’s so cute, all concerned like that. His cheeks are flushed._

_“I’m fine,” she says. “What’s wrong with you?”_

_The other one, the taller one—_ Stan, _her mind provides—retorts, “None of your business,” which then_ makes _it her business, because who talks like that unless they have something to hide?_

_Bill shoots him a look. Tiny Boy seems ten seconds away from jumping out of his skin, horrified, and blurts, “There’s a kid outside. Looks like someone killed him.”_

_“We need some suh-suh-supplies,” Bill says. Stan frowns, mouth pinched, like he’s mad they’re discussing this. “But we don’t have enough money.”_

_Bev stares at the stuff in the kid’s hands, is slightly intrigued by the concept of them—what,_ fixing _this kid, apparently on the brink of death, with items they bought at a drugstore. She catches Bill’s gaze, friendly, slightly spooked, and Stan’s, judgmental, distrusting, and the other’s, ready to flee at any given moment, and shrugs._

_Mr. Keene lets her try on his glasses; all it takes is a smile and a flip of her hair, which is gross and telling and even more uncomfortable than having anyone see her with a box of tampons. Bill and his friends sneak out of the store undetected and Bev becomes a Loser that warm June afternoon._

_It’s the most important day of her life._

5

Mike watches Stan flip through the phone book, right to the back page where he’s scribbled all of their numbers and addresses. His writing his smudged in places, the paper worn from months of searching. He’s since memorized all of them, able to call anyone from anywhere, but it seems as if Stan has not. Unlike him, honestly, since he’s so good at math.

“If you’re not calling Richie,” he begins, wrapping his fingers around the mug, “who are you calling?” 

Stan runs a finger over the space between Ben and Bev, empty yet somehow full, faded like a name, a place, a number had been there once but has since been erased. Stan’s thumb turns red, then white, with the pressure he applies there, the rest of his hand shaking with the effort. “There used to be seven of us,” he says. “Do you remember?” 

_No,_ Mike wants to say, but then—

A flash of running, tumbling through the Barrens with Bowers biting at his heels. His shirt clings to his back, to his chest, and sweat slithers down his face, salty on his lips. It feels like the hottest day of the year, feels like he’ll never escape him, and then he races right into a group of kids, five boys and a girl, who have been collecting rocks for some inexplicable reason.

For _this_ reason.

In his memory, they are just bodies and faces, but he knows each and every one of them. Knows they’re his, and he is theirs, and this group, this _club,_ is his destiny. They’re meant for something big, but better than that: they’re meant to be his friends. 

There’s Big Bill, and Stan the Man, and Trashmouth, and Ben, who Richie calls Haystack, Bevvie, and—

The realization floods him first— _seven, Lucky Seven, magical seven—_ and then the guilt— _how could I forget? How could_ we _forget?—_ and then Stan is tugging on his sleeve, pulling him out of his reverie, out of the memories of a summer past, simultaneously the worst yet best time of his life, if only for a few short weeks. Nothing else has compared. 

“You remember?” Stan asks. 

“Yeah,” Mike says, shaky. The word feels heavy. “How could I…”

“ _Look._ ” Stan jabs his finger at the book, where Mike’s own handwriting, shitty, rushed scrawl, appears as if he’s doing it right now. He blinks, splays his palms out on the table, proof that he is _not_ holding a pen or pencil, and watches. 

Letter by letter, it fills up, and the two of them sit in tense silence while words and numbers that were not there before rush to the page. 

_Eddie Kaspbrak,_ it reads, and a Maine area code, and an address.

His friends. The Losers Club. Bill, Stan, Richie, Ben, Bev, _Eddie._

Mike feels wide awake, jittery and aware and kind of nauseous. “Stan, what’s going on?” 

“I don’t know,” Stan replies, fingers trembling when he wraps them around Mike’s wrist, “but Richie’s wish must’ve—Richie must’ve found him.”

“What?” Mike asks. He’s never been this confused before, never had to look at someone else for answers he couldn’t process or find on his own. “What does that mean?” 

“It means,” Stan says, licking his lips, “that we’re done forgetting Eddie. It _means_ ”—he pauses here to grab the phone, checks the clock and thinks otherwise—“whatever evil is in this town has woken up and it wants us back.” He taps Eddie’s name. “All of us.” 

Mike looks down at the page again, watches Stan’s finger tap-tap- _tap_ against the curve of an _e,_ remembers picking Eddie up, careful of his broken arm, and putting him in the basket of his bike, he was that small, and biking him away from—from—

_The house on Neibolt._

29 Neibolt Street, that crooked, dark house, bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. Where the homeless and the junkies curled up and licked their wounds. Where evil seemed to live and breathe and fester, even before they knew what was there. The closest thing they had to a real haunted house. 

Eddie’d broken his arm there. They all almost died there. The details are fuzzy, but he feels the anxiety, and the fear, and the overwhelming surety that this was _it_ flood through him like it was happening right this second, not years ago. 

Eddie.

Eddie Kaspbrak.

Eddie… Richie used to call him Eddie Spaghetti, used to pinch his cheeks and call him Eds, and Eddie talked a mile a minute, knew so much about the weirdest things, and had a bravery that couldn’t be matched. Eddie was a steady, sure presence, a loss they all felt time and time again but couldn’t place. 

Mike scrubs his hands down his face, feels his erratic pulse drag down his cheeks. It doesn’t wipe away the filthy feeling rushing through his bloodstream, doesn’t make him feel any less _bad_ about forgetting someone so important, but it calms him in some small, insignificant way. 

“We all forgot,” Stan says. It must be written all over his face, his feelings. “It wasn’t just you.” 

“Even Richie?” Mike’s traitorous mouth asks, because he may not remember much, but he remembers… He remembers _that._

Stan hesitates for the breath of a moment and that is enough for Mike to know without words, but he says, “No” anyway. His brow furrows. “Richie made sure he didn’t.” 

Mike looks at him, head spinning, full of too many thoughts to rationalize anything. Maybe he understands what he’s saying. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he’s always had Eddie Kaspbrak’s face in the back of his mind. Maybe he’s always known something, some _one_ was missing. Maybe, maybe, maybe. 

He glances past Stan to where his grandfather keeps his liquor, up on the tallest shelf, and decides to turn his tea into something stronger. 

Stan watches him, pushes his mug towards him, and lets Mike fill half of it up with whiskey before telling him to stop. 

1

A memory:

_Eddie sucks on a piece of watermelon before he bites through it, chewing, and watches Richie whisper fervently at Stan, who makes a show of rolling his eyes. They are two of the most dramatic people Eddie knows, even if Stan pretends he’s above it all. Richie gesticulates like a loon, throwing his arms this way and that, and Stan shoves him hard into Eddie’s direction with a very definitive glare._

_Richie’s eyes widen behind his dumb glasses, head shaking, and Stan kicks at his shin, forcing him closer and closer. Eddie feels his pulse skip several beats, like a record with a scratch down the middle as Richie starts to invade his space, backing up and mouthing things at Stan—terrible things, probably. He topples onto the bench next to Eddie like he had no idea it would be there. He lands with an audible_ oomph, _presses his knees together, and looks at him, gaze hot and searing. Searching._

_Eddie hands over a cube of melon which Richie plucks from his fingers. His nail splits the fruit, sends a drop of juice down his thumb. Richie pops it in his mouth, drags his tongue along his skin. Eddie watches but pretends he doesn’t._

_“What’d you do to Stan?”_

_“What didn’t I do to Stan?” Richie jokes, laughing almost uncomfortably. It trails off, dying halfway through, and he stuffs his hands in the pockets of his sweatshirt, a nice red color that makes the freckles on his pale skin pop. He sniffs, coughs, clears his throat._

_Eddie debates asking him if he wants one of the cough drops in his backpack. They’re cherry, he thinks. Maybe that lemon flavor that’s inherently better than any other ones. He doesn’t share those, but he’d give one to Richie if he needed it._

_Richie thrusts something into his lap, stands up, and says, “I made this for you.”_

_“What is it?”_

_Richie fiddles with his glasses, bound together in the middle with tape. He looks like a bug. “Your, uh—they’re… they’re songs that remind me of you.”_

_Warmth spreads beneath Eddie’s windbreaker, where his chest cracks open, ribs splintering to make room for his growing heart, and he looks down. The cover of the cassette has a million little doodles all over it, stick figures and something that looks like a dinosaur. “Oh,” he says, “thanks. Do you want some more fruit?”_

_“No,” Richie says, “I have to go push Stan.”_

_“What, why?”_

_“I don’t like the look on his face,” Richie decides._

_Eddie peers over. “It looks like it always does.”_

_“Exactly,” says Richie, and he—the only word for it is_ flee, _if we’re being honest. He flees. He scurries. He rushes away, colliding into Stan, and their dumb wrestling match turns into an uncomfortable-looking rolling hug. Eddie hears Stan call Richie a dumbass. He is not wrong, but—_

_Eddie looks down at the tape again, opens it, and skims the insert. Richie has terrible handwriting, but years of friendship has made it easy to decode, and some sort of metal taste bursts in his mouth though doesn’t feel very nauseous. The opposite, in fact. He feels… energized. Bright. Like a firework has exploded in his stomach but instead of killing him it’s just made everything better. Kind of like how he imagines Peter Parker feels as Spider Man, like everything is enhanced and easy and he… he understands._

_Richie put his name in all caps. Well, not his name, but what Richie decided_ was _his name._ EDS, _it says, with a big, shaky heart next to it. He’s scribbled something out beneath it. If Eddie squints, he can make out the letters_ _, and maybe something that starts with an_ L _but he can’t be sure; Richie’s gone to great lengths to make sure he can’t read it._

 _It says_ TRASHMOUTH RECORDS _on it like Richie isn’t just a dumb thirteen year old with access to his parents’ extensive music collection. Each_ O _is a smiley face._

_Eddie thinks he is so very stupid, but he feels incredibly warm. Almost too warm for the weather, and he’d unzip his coat if he weren’t worried about catching a cold or the tail-end of the flu._

_It’s a list of twelve songs, most of which Eddie’s already heard and enjoyed, a entire genre of music Richie doesn’t even_ like, _and there’s a message here, if he reads it correctly, which—_

_His stomach doesn’t do somersaults like this for no reason._

_There’s_ You’re My Best Friend _by Queen, and_ I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me) _by Whitney Houston, and_ In My Life _by The Beatles, and_ Time After Time _by Cyndi Lauper, and_ Total Eclipse of the Heart _by Bonnie Tyler, and, of course, because no playlist of Richie’s is ever complete without it,_ Africa _by Toto._

 _He bites down on his lip so hard it smarts, and Stan grabs Richie by the back of his neck and makes him look at him. Eddie misses it, consumed by the remaining songs, reading into it—reading_ too much, _probably—and Stan hisses at Richie, “See? I_ told _you.”_

2

A memory: 

_“Trade ya,” Richie suggests, balancing a large cupcake in his palm._

_Eddie looks up from his bagged lunch: a boring bologna sandwich without cheese (lactose intolerant) or any kind of condiment (unnecessary) and a bag full of baby carrots. “What?”_

_“For the carrots,” Richie says._

_Bill talks with his mouth full because he’s gross. “A cuh-cuh-cupcake for carrots?”_

_“My eyesight is shit, Bill,” Richie replies easily, not even bothering to wait for Eddie’s response. He swaps their foods and plops down across from him, chomping loudly on the vegetable. “Sorry for taking every opportunity to fix that.”_

_Stan snorts. “Don’t think all the baby carrots in the world will fix that atrocity.”_

_“We’ll see about that, Urine,” Richie retorts._

_Eddie swipes at the frosting on the cupcake, licks it off his finger, and then steals Bill’s plastic knife to cut it down the middle. He takes half and pushes the other towards Richie._

_Richie eats the cake part only, sliding the top, still covered in frosting, back to Eddie._

3

A memory: 

_The feel of Richie’s hands on his back burns almost as intensely as the sun does, blistering the skin of his shoulders and the tip of his nose despite the sunscreen he’s meticulously applied. He stumbles, not ready for it—the shove, the touch, the person—and swallows back the fear that makes his stomach swoop into his feet. He scrambles to take hold of something, anything, and wraps his fingers around Richie’s wrist._

_It’s electric there, too. He flinches._

_“Don’t you fucking dare,” he warns._

_“Dare what?” Richie grins at him, mischievous and knowing._

_Eddie narrows his eyes. “I know what you’re trying to do.”_

_“I’m not trying to do anything,” Richie says. “I’m just enjoying the view, Eds.”_

_Eddie scoffs. “You see this view every day. There’s nothing new.”_

_Richie’s smile falters for a moment into something softer, and the sun cannot be blamed for the color of his cheeks, not yet. “Doesn’t mean I don’t like it,” he replies, eyes trained to Eddie’s, “or that I don’t want to keep looking at it.”_

_There is a roaring in Eddie’s ears. “Shut up,” he says loudly, trying to talk over it. He sounds so quiet. He sounds like he’s drowning in it. “You’re just trying to distract me so you can shove me in.”_

_Richie tilts his head to the side, shows off the long slope of his neck, spotted with tiny, dark freckles. Eddie looks at them, maps out the shapes there, and frowns at Richie, brows furrowed, mouth set into a furious pout. Richie glances from there to his eyes, back and forth and back and forth. “I’m sorry, I’m what?” he asks._

_“Trying to distract me so you can shove me—_ RICHIE!” _Eddie shrieks, falling backwards, with nothing but the whistling wind and the cold water to keep him company._

_His entire body hurts when he lands, but the splash is awfully impressive. When Eddie emerges again, spitting, Richie is already down there, blinking furiously behind his glasses, water staining the lenses. Eddie swims over to him, flicks him in the forehead, and says, “This is why you’re always breaking your glasses, dumbass.”_

_“I’m always breaking my glasses because Bowers likes to punch me in the face,” Richie retorts._

_“Okay, fair,” says Eddie, “but you also never take them off when you jump in the quarry, you piece of shit.”_

_“Ouch, Eds, you’re being particularly vicious tod—“_

_Eddie leaps, hands on Richie’s shoulders, and dunks him under. Richie splutters, breaks the surface, grabs Eddie’s ankle, and the two of them fight beneath the water, kicking out and at each other and one time at Bev and Mike._

_And if Eddie clings to Richie’s back when they finally stop, feet and arms hooked around his front, it has nothing to do with Eddie’s need to be close and everything to do with destroying Stan and Bill at Chicken._

4

A memory:

_Richie shifts in his seat, jiggles his knee, checks his watch, glances at Eddie, and takes a handful of popcorn from the bag between them. He checks the time again, looks at the screen, and drops, like, four pieces of popcorn in Eddie’s lap._

_“Jesus fucking Christ,” Eddie snaps, much louder than intended. “Can you calm down?”_

_The parent ahead of them shushes him loudly, most likely due to Eddie’s swearing, something he picked up from his increased time with Richie—both of which were things his mother disliked so greatly it made Eddie like them even more. But then again, he always liked Richie._

_Richie snorts, leans forward, and whispers in Eddie’s ear, “This movie is boring.”_

_“Of course it is,” Eddie replies. “We’ve seen_ Who Framed Roger Rabbit? _three times already.” He tries to pry a kernel out from between his teeth with his tongue, avoiding the press of Richie’s arm against his. He doesn’t know why he’s so aware of it, of Richie’s skin, and his presence, and his dumb tics—the way he clicks his tongue and slides down in his seat and cannot remain still for even a second._

_“If I did the math right—“_

_“—you didn’t—“_

_“—shut up.” Richie presses two knuckles lightly into Eddie’s chin, pushing his face to the side. “_ As I was saying, _if I did it right,_ Die Hard _should be starting in five minutes.”_

_“Okay,” Eddie replies._

_“So I’m gonna leave,” Richie continues, “and you can follow me after.”_

_Eddie raises his brows inquisitively and looks around the theater. “I don’t think anyone will notice or care if we leave right now together. I’ve been talking through this movie so much they’ll probably be glad for it.”_

_“I_ need _to see_ Die Hard, _Eds,” Richie reminds him for the fiftieth time. “If you get me kicked out of the movie because you won’t shut up, I will gut you.”_

_“‘Kay,” Eddie says, because Richie would never physically harm him. “Come on. We definitely wasted a minute and a half arguing and you’ll definitely beat me up if you miss the opening scene.”_

_Eddie leads the way, the least stressed of the pair—he doesn’t care either way for this movie, would’ve probably sat through_ Roger Rabbit _another time—and is about to enter the hall when Richie grabs his shoulder. “You have a nice face,” Richie whispers. “Check to see if the coast is clear. They won’t stop you.”_

_“I have a what?” Eddie asks. His lips burn with salt as he turns around._

_Richie gestures to his face, waving his hands about. “A nice face!” he insists. “I look shifty, I know that, but you look so wholesome and rule-abiding. Too bad they’ll never know that’s a fucking lie, but… the whole cuteness thing will get you points.”_

_Eddie blinks at him._

_Richie blinks back._

_Eddie blinks again._

_“_ Go, _” Richie insists, shoving him. Eddie almost spills his popcorn, which would be a whole tragedy, and cranes his neck this way and that, searching for the employees that would definitely rat them out if they caught them leaving this movie and entering another, mostly because they didn’t pay for it and also because it’s rated R._

_There’s no one. It’s just Eddie and movie posters and the loud geometric pattern of the rug._

_He pushes the door open behind him, grabs blindly for Richie’s hand, and pulls him across the hall. Richie shuffles after him, kicking at his heels, and slips his fingers between Eddie’s. There are two empty seats in the back, where it's darkest, where no one will see the baby fat of their cheeks, and Eddie lets go of Richie._

_Wipes his sweaty palm on his shorts._

_Breathes in, plays with the popcorn in his teeth._

_Elbows Richie, though it’s not clear if it’s on purpose or accidental._

_Offers his hand up on the armrest between them._

_He uses the other to eat more popcorn, the last of the trailers fading into the start of the movie, and does not count the seconds._

_Richie holds his hand again at second eleven._

5

A memory: 

_Eddie shifts the weight of his books against his left side, hits his fist against his lock—it always sticks—and twists his combination into it. A flurry of papers, tiny and folded, ripped from notebooks, flutter to the ground. Eddie shoves his shit inside and bends down to retrieve them._

_There are five of them._

hi cutie, _one says, because, of course, it’s from Richie and Richie loves to remind him that he’s a little baby,_ we are eating lunch outside!!! 

_Another says_ i read the latest the new teen titans comic without you sorry it was good i brought it :)

 _The next says_ i finished our math hw i can help you with it :) 

hahaha bill looks so stupid today he got the funniest haircut have you seen it? _says the fourth._

 _The last is smudged and hastily folded, almost ripped down the middle, like he thought about keeping it to himself instead of shoving it in Eddie’s locker._ i miss having class with you why’d they have to separate us school is so boring now. 

_Eddie shoves them all in his backpack, the front pocket filled with all the little notes Richie gives him, but he takes the last one, squints at it. He chews on the inside of his cheek, scratches his nose, and puts that one in his pocket._

6

Eddie doesn’t know how long he stays there, nose pressed to Richie’s throat, arms wrapped clumsily around his body. His scent fills him up, something that shouldn’t be as familiar as it is, given the time passed: a heady, woodsy smell that seeps into him and burrows deep. Eddie has never felt particularly safe in this house, has never felt particularly at _home,_ but here, with Richie, he feels his bones settle. He feels himself relax, the nonstop jittering in his muscles and the frantic speed of his thoughts coming to a halt. Normalizing. 

Richie’s presence slows him. Fills the blanks. It’s like with every second he spends near him, a switch flips, powering him, breaking whatever hold was over him. His memories fit into his brain like a puzzle, magnifying the things he’d only guessed at, had always known were there but didn’t have the power to enhance. They pass by him so quickly he hardly has time to relive them, but it doesn’t seem to matter. They click into place and he remembers them, faces and names and places and moments—people who’d loved him, people who’d saved him, people he’d loved in return. People he’d thought he’d die for. People _worth_ dying for. 

The fear of that last summer passes over him in a wave, having been afraid his whole life. A clown is nothing compared to the things his mother instilled in his brain, the things she tried to get him to believe, the things he’d almost started to believe, stuck here the way he is. 

Richie’s heart beats loud; he can feel it matching his own, revving up like a race, and there is something in the way it makes Eddie feel. Something in the way they mimic each other. There is something _there._

Eddie sniffles, moves, and Richie breathes in sharply, so quietly Eddie almost doesn’t hear it. But he does, ears in tune with the softest of sounds—the way his house sighs, the humming of his mother, the packs of kids outside. So aware of all the things he isn’t allowed to be, or have, or do. Eddie untangles from Richie, slow and steady, so as not to hurt him further, and feels the fluttering of a storm of butterflies in his stomach when Richie tightens despite his pain, when Richie whispers, “ _No._ ” 

“I’m not…” Eddie’s voice sounds hoarse. He has to work to pry his tongue from the roof of his mouth, to make his jaw work. “I’m not going anywhere,” he says.

Richie holds on like he doesn’t believe him, like a promise means something different to him, and Eddie loosens his vice grip on his hips. He thinks he’s beginning to bruise, Richie’s fingers digging in so deep, but, then again, it might not be so bad. Not if it’s from him. Not if it’s Richie who is doing the hurting. 

He pulls back, muscles in his legs straining. Eddie catches his gaze, flushes, and looks away, only to reel himself back in. He hasn’t seen him in so long, and despite it all coming back, everything feels like the first time. 

They stare at each other, almost unblinkingly, like this will all disappear in one fell swoop. Richie’s eyes are so attentive, so dark, full of worry and fear and a strong, visible yearning that matches the one festering inside of Eddie. 

He remembers that, too, as the rest of his life filters in, how everything with Richie was always heightened to a degree that never made any sense—or, perhaps, always made sense. Maybe nothing has ever made sense except for the two of them. 

He used to be afraid of this—of the way he felt around Richie, of the way Richie could make him feel. He’d wanted his attention, wanted all of it and more, but when he got it, he’d get anxious and overwhelmed. His heart would race, and he’d talk so fast and so loud it was a wonder anyone could understand him or get a word in edgewise. Richie was—Richie _is_ the type of person that looks at you and looks _right_ at you, that makes you the center of everything. 

Eddie couldn’t handle being seen like that, so he’d fight him, it, and the implications, the way his body reacted. Everything was an argument, so he could explain the pink in his face. Everything was something that could be solved with a shove or a punch. It was an excuse. It was a reason to hide, not knowing he’d be hiding involuntarily for the rest of his life, unable to do anything about it. And now, he wants… he wants… 

He wants it. He wants the attention.

A voice fills his mind, the same as the leper in his dream. _What are you looking for, Eddie?_

He answers it. _Look at me,_ he thinks. _Look at me._

“I am, Eds,” Richie says back. Eddie must’ve spoken out loud. He doesn’t know if he’s embarrassed or not. 

“Oh,” he replies. “Hi.” 

Richie’s nose twitches as smiles, and Eddie _dies_ at the sight, lopsided and cute and aimed towards him, like he’s the best thing Richie’s ever seen. Like he’s looking, _really_ looking, and he doesn’t hate what he sees, even all the parts of Eddie that make him unlovable. “Hey,” he murmurs. 

Eddie brushes his fingers against the line of Richie’s jaw, feels the smoothness of his skin, the heat of it. He leaves them there, takes in the permanency of a body, of a person, and then pulls the curls out from beneath the arm of his glasses, letting them spring free. His hair is longer now, frizzy and curlier than ever. 

Richie swallows, turns his face into his hand. His pupils grow larger, then smaller, then back again. They fluctuate as he stares, and Eddie has so much he wants to say to him, now that he knows it’s him. Now that they’re reunited. Now that they have this. He wants to tell him _I think I hallucinate you, I think it’s your voice I hear when I panic, I think you’ve always managed to make me feel better._

That last few weeks of their friendship, Richie would talk and talk and _talk,_ masking his own terror in shitty, grotesque jokes. Eddie would watch, and panic, and his asthma would take over, rendering him breathless, chest constricting, lungs collapsing. Richie would notice and everything would stop; he’d say something particularly gross about his mom, and Eddie’s soul would find his body just in time to punch him. Nothing seemed to piss him off more than a joke about his overbearing mother, not even a murderous fucking clown or the things that murderous fucking clown seemed to know about him.

 _You calm me down,_ he thinks, _and I haven’t been calm in years._

He jumps as Richie brings his own hand to Eddie’s face, tentative in his touch. “You have blood here.” He licks his thumb and rubs at the spot, focused intently on it. 

Eddie grits his teeth, closes his eyes. “Don’t worry about me,” he says. “How’s your shoulder?” 

“Last I checked you were very nervous about the spread of disease through bodily liquids,” Richie retorts. 

“I…it’s been years,” Eddie replies, “and I’m pretty sure your blood is fine.” He whacks Richie’s hand away, the tingle of his touch almost too much for him at this point. He thinks he might start purring. “How’s your shoulder? And don’t try to lie. I can see it on your face.” 

“So then you know,” Richie says. “It hurts like a bitch.” 

Eddie leans forward to look at it, hovering over him, and ignores Richie’s sharp intake of breath. Ignores the subsequent flip of his own stomach when he hears it, such a strong reaction to a fucking _noise._ The skin has begun to bruise around the slashes, swelling with reds and purples. It’s gross, honestly, but oddly enough it doesn’t look as bad as it did when he first got here. It looks like it’s healing, slowly but steadily pulling itself back together, which is something that is not physically possible. Tendons stretch between each deep gash, not quite meeting but doing enough to staunch the bleeding. Eddie finds it fascinating, what the human body can withstand, and prods at it again with his fingers, like he did earlier. 

“Hey, wait,” Richie blurts. “Don’t do that.” 

“Sorry.” Eddie pulls his hand back, curling his fingers around his thumb. He licks his lips, squinting at the mess Richie’s made of his sheets and himself, covered in dirt and blood. “I think you need stitches,” he says.

“So do ‘em,” Richie replies immediately. “I trust you.”

Eddie tilts his head, considering, and asks, “Why?” 

Richie shrugs. “I’ve always trusted you,” he tells him. “It’s your face.” 

“What about it?” 

It’s _something,_ watching the red seep into Richie’s throat, his cheeks. He looks horrendous like that, but Eddie wants to… he wants… 

The muscle in his jaw twitches. 

“It’s cute” is what Richie says.

Eddie feels himself warm up just as much as Richie. He wrinkles his nose, trying to tamp down the impossibly fond and also incredibly embarrassed feeling filling him. He coughs. He says, “Cute and trustworthy aren’t the same thing.” 

“They are if it’s you,” Richie blurts. He turns even redder, if that’s possible, purple almost. “I mean,” he says, “you never really expect people with such nice faces to betray you, you know? Like, _for sure_ Stan will stab anyone in the back if it benefits him—“

“Stan would—are you saying Stan doesn’t have a nice face? Stan has a nice face.” 

“I mean, yes, Stan has a nice face,” Richie returns, baffled. “Very nice. Symmetrical.” 

Eddie laughs, a high-pitched giggle. “I’ve never done stitches before. I don’t know why you would trust my face for that.”

“You didn’t stitch up Ben’s stomach?” 

“In an _alley?_ With shit we stole from a _drugstore?_ ” Eddie scoffs. “Absolutely not. What the fuck. Do you know how many germs there are over there? I could’ve killed him. What do you think I am, a doctor?” 

“A little bit, yeah,” Richie admits. “I think you pulled one of my teeth out once. I trust you. If you want to stitch me up, stitch me up. I’m always here for your experiments.” 

“Not always,” Eddie finds himself saying. He’d been alone for so long, for four years that dragged on for what felt like centuries with no one but his mother for company. He’d been molded into exactly what she wanted, made tinier and more agreeable with no outside forces to show him there is more to life than her. She’d gotten everything and he’d gotten nothing. He wonders what he would’ve been like if he’d had Richie, if he had any of them—Bill or Ben or Bev. Stan. Mike. 

With Richie right now, it’s hard to remember who he’d been hours ago. Perhaps this is who he’s always been. Maybe something was making sure he wouldn’t fall into old patterns. Maybe the medications she always gave him were not so much a means to control him but a way to make sure she didn’t. There’s no sense in it, but there’s no sense in this town if what Richie said is true. _I wished for you._

Eddie thinks of the tape he always plays and the voice that talks him down from his panic attacks and the dreams he has when the prescription is too strong. _I think I wished for you, too._

“I’m here now,” Richie says. His voice wobbles. Trembles. He catches his bottom lip between his teeth with each word. “I would’ve been here before if I could have. If I’d known.”

“So you’ll stay?”

“It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you,” Richie says lightly. 

“Still obsessed with that song, I see,” Eddie replies, as if the lyrics don’t make him itchy all over. 

“A little bit.”

Eddie looks from his face to his wound, still slowly but surely trying to heal itself, a magic that Eddie does not want to get into right now. He doesn’t trust it, not if it’s Richie, not if he’s just gotten him and a piece of who he really is back. It could’ve healed entirely right in front of him and Eddie would still insist they go to the doctor, but he’s not exactly allowed to leave his house, so his mediocre medical skills will have to do... like they always did.

They relied on him almost as much as he relied on them. A lot of things they got into were hard to explain, things that would get them sent home indefinitely. Being stabbed by Bowers? An instant target on their backs, bigger than before, if word got out. The cuts and scrapes and injuries from being in the Barrens, at the quarry, in a hole in the ground? They’d no longer be able to hang out there. They’d no longer have safe spaces where they could hang out with each other.

In some cases… they wouldn’t have a chance to hang out with each other _period._

So Eddie started carrying around the fanny pack. He’d claimed it was so he could keep track of all of the shit his mother made him take, but it was more than that. He’d stocked it with a bunch of stuff, read all the medical reports in waiting rooms, and pretended like being called Doctor Kaspbrak in that British voice was annoying. It wasn’t. He liked it. He liked feeling wanted, and knowing they trusted him, and that when they had a problem they could go to him. 

He’s never felt that way before. After. Since then.

He forgets himself for a moment—where he is, what he’s doing, who he’s with—and starts rifling through his room, opening drawers and slamming them shut. He trips over his feet, catching his toes in his pajama pants, and runs his hand almost viciously through his hair, unable to find the fucking first aid kit his mother makes him keep.

There’s one in the bathroom, he knows, and he can grab the needles from the sewing stuff in the hall closet. He knows in theory how to do this, but… 

Eddie turns to his bedroom door, breathes in deep, and twists the knob. It’s silent, almost eerily so—because the house itself is creepy—and light trickles in fragments and pieces, weak as morning wakes the world. His mother is shut up in her own room, no doubt knocked out from the sleeping pill she’d tried to pawn off on him, not to help him but to get him out of the way. The ball is one hundred percent in his court, no one is in his way, he can make the shot, but that does not stop him from worrying, from cracking each of his knuckles over and over. 

He stands there, in the doorway, looks left and right, stares at the wooden planks of his mother’s door, painted burgundy, so unlike the rest, which are white. He can see it now, his mother opening the door, appearing in the hall, robe wrapped around her, squinting to see what commotion he’s making. She wants him silent and obedient and sneaking around with Richie Tozier in his bedroom is the complete opposite of that. But it is highly unlikely that will happen. Eddie can and will make it around his own house. He’s done it before. He can do it again.

“Wait,” Richie blurts, “where are you going?” 

“ _Shhhh,_ ” Eddie insists, waving a hand at him. “I’ll be right back.” 

“Wait, Eds, no,” Richie says loudly. The mattress squeaks and groans as he heaves himself up. “ _Fuck,_ ” he mutters, wincing, and Eddie whips around. 

“Stay put, Richie,” Eddie hisses. “I’m just going to the bathroom to get some things. It’ll take two seconds.” 

Standing, Richie looks worse than before, dried blood mixed with dirt caked to his skin, dark bruises marking up the length of his right side like he’d been thrown against something quite hard. 

“You look like shit,” Eddie snaps. “ _Stay._ ” 

“I’m not a dog,” Richie retorts, gripping Eddie’s wrist. “I’m not leaving you again.” 

“It’s just the bathroom. It’s right across the hall.” 

“I see it,” says Richie. “I’m coming with you.”

“It’s _across the hall—_ “

“—I don’t _care—_ “ 

Eddie grits his teeth, narrows at his eyes at Richie, seeing him through slits, exasperated and annoyed. “You know what? Fine,” he says. “You can clean yourself up. There’s stuff under the sink. If you look in the mirror, you can see me at the closet, since you’re a fucking freak.”

“You bet I’ll be looking, cutie,” Richie says, grinning at him. 

Eddie wants to punch him but his face turns red instead. He shoves him, not caring if he’ll hurt him, and mutters, “Shut the fuck up. Don’t wake up my mom. I can’t explain this.” 

“I can,” Richie replies, dropping his voice to a whisper. “Star crossed lovers reunited, a real Romeo and Juliet situation. She’ll love that shit.” He bends down, one hand gripping his shoulder, and pulls open the cabinets. “Hey, did she mention me at all? She miss me? I know it’s been a real long time since she’s seen my wang—“ 

“You are so lucky you’re already injured,” Eddie hisses at him, throwing a towel at his face. “When you’re healed, I’m going to kill you.” 

Richie’s smile widens. “Kinky. Can’t wait.” He slides the antiseptic and cotton pads down the sink. “Can you help me with this? It kind of stings when I move.” 

“Useless,” Eddie says. He drops the tiny tin of needles by the soap dispenser, and preps the materials. “It’s gonna sting more now. Sit.” 

Eddie shuts the door behind him, locks it, looks from the rubbing alcohol to the needle he’ll have to use to Richie’s pale face. He’s a mess, has always been a mess, but this is different from anything else. Even back when they were first terrorized, Richie made it out relatively unscathed. At least physically. He decides to shove open the window and run the shower next on the off chance this goes south. 

“This is how I started my evening,” Richie notes, gaze tracking Eddie around the room. “Nice to know I’ll always end up in a bathroom.”

“You wouldn’t have if you stayed in my room like I asked,” Eddie says. 

“I fucking wished for you, dude,” Richie says. “I’m not going to waste time now that I’ve got it.” 

Eddie swipes at his injuries, wincing when Richie jerks his entire body, kneeing him in the thigh. “I still can’t believe you’d waste a wish on me. Don’t you really need to mean them?” 

“I didn’t waste anything,” Richie murmurs. “I took advantage of you. Of all of you. I made the assumption you’d always be there and that nothing could happen to us and then you were gone and…” He digs his nails into his palms. “I don’t think I ever realized how important you were to me until I couldn’t see you ever again. It was like I’d lost a limb.” He catches Eddie’s hand before he can finish up; there is one last bit there, stuck to the tiny shreds of skin around the scratches. “Of course I meant it. It’s you. I always mean it when it’s you.” 

“The last time you saw me, I was twelve.” 

Richie swallows, eyes bright behind his glasses, trained on Eddie’s face, which is growing pinker and pinker by the second. “Yeah,” Richie says. Words—different words—are written all over his face. They both ignore them. “And the last time you saw me, I was thirteen.”

“We are seventeen now,” Eddie says, like that’s an explanation and not just basic fact. He’s been this age for approximately seven hours—or no hours, if you’re basing it off his time of birth, which was somewhere around four in the afternoon—and so far, this may be the best year of his life. Pathetic, really, but Eddie Kaspbrak has never been in the running for any coolness awards.

“Some good math skills there, Eds,” Richie replies.

Eddie rolls his eyes and drops a bundle of cotton pads into the sink. “I’m just saying. It’s been four years since we—is it wise to wish for _me?_ ”

“You’re not listening,” Richie says.

Eddie bites back the obvious, annoyed response of _I am_ and says, “Take some of these. Do you have a lighter? You always used to.”

“What are you gonna do? Burn me alive?” But he hands one over, green and beat up, pulled from his pocket. He swaps it for three ibuprofens, dry swallows them, and watches Eddie who heats up the longest needle in his mother’s sewing kit with an uneasy hand.

“I’m going to stitch you up,” Eddie says. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Richie sniffs. “I ignored it because it’s stupid.”

“C’mon,” Eddie presses, squinting at the thing. How is he supposed to know it’s ready? How is he supposed to just… stick this in Richie’s body and sew him back together? He wets his lips, decides it _must_ be usable, and ignores Richie’s gaze as he fails to thread the thing with the fishing line he found in the closet, behind the packages and packages of wipes. “Answer me,” he continues. “You’re gonna want a distraction. I’ve never done this before.”

Richie shrugs his good shoulder and reaches out to grab at Eddie. He gives his knee, the closest thing he can reach, a squeeze. “I trust you.”

“Stop saying that,” Eddie says. “It’s been four years.”

“Nothing’s changed, Eds. Four years, twenty-seven years—it’ll be the same.”

 _It’ll be the same._ The words send a shiver down his spine. “What will be?” It’s as much a distraction for Richie as it is for himself.

He nudges Richie’s legs apart, settles between them, and presses the needle to his skin, ripped apart and struggling to close on its own. This area of his body feels warmer than the rest, tingles a bit when Eddie touches it again, like the magic’s power is tangible, is real. Eddie ignores it, bites down on his tongue, and shoves the needle through.

His stomach riots and his heart races, but it weaves it in and out. He can’t be sure if he’s making more of a mess of Richie’s body than he’d already—no, than something else had already—but he feels a bit better about the whole thing when he sees the bottom pull itself together tight. The line is practically nonexistent, but Eddie knows it’s there.

Richie inhales sharply, stiff beneath him, his fingers digging in tight around Eddie’s knee. He feels his nails all but break the skin behind it, the flannel of his pants saving him from tiny little indentations.

“Sorry,” Eddie murmurs. “Does it hurt?”

It takes Richie a second or two of labored breathing—slow, contained, very reminiscent to the way Eddie handles his asthma, his panic attacks—and then he’s saying, “Not as much as it hurt the first time.”

Eddie doesn’t know when his free hand started to cup the side of Richie’s neck, but he moves it, squeezing the area of the injury to force the needle through again. “What did it?” he asks, because he never got an answer to that, either.

Silence reigns, the needle going in and out a few more times. Eddie is halfway done, the stitching lopsided and ugly but holding, and the wound puckers like the ones on their hands. Richie’s body begins to relax, used to the ministrations, and he loosens his grip on Eddie.

“Do you want to know what did this to me or why I wished for you?”

“I’m not allowed to know both?”

Richie looks up at him, face white. The heat from the shower has fogged his glasses. “What’s more important to you?”

“You told me why you wished for me already,” Eddie replies, “so I guess the first one.” He speeds up, comfortable with the action now, and finishes the first suture, typing it up with a knot he has no idea why or how he knows.

He moves away from Richie to sterilize the needle again, not willing to take any chances. He wipes his sleeve against the mirror’s glass and glances at Richie as he does so, running the water and soaking the thing in rubbing alcohol. Richie is looking back at him, though it is hard to see what his eyes are doing, and the set of his mouth is—discomfiting, to say the least.

Richie blows his cheeks out. “There’s more to it than just me missing you,” he admits. “Me trusting you isn’t the only thing that hasn’t changed.”

Eddie stops what he’s doing, fishing line wrapped around his fingers, and doesn’t hide the fact that he’s staring at him through the reflection. “What else?” he asks. This feels important.

A thin stream of blood trickles down Richie’s chest. He wipes at it with a finger, then wipes that on his jeans. Eddie thinks belatedly that he should have offered him pants. Shorts, actually, because the pants he owns never would’ve fit him.

“The last time I saw you, you were twelve,” Richie parrots, “and when you were twelve, I loved you.” He snaps his jaw shut, the muscling jumping there, and looks down at his palms.

Eddie grips the sink. “You loved me?”

“I loved you,” Richie repeats, “and not how I love Stan, or how I loved Bill. I loved you different. I have since I met you, and that’s why I wished for you. I wanted more time, because we didn’t get enough, because we didn’t get to figure it out, because I _missed_ you, and… and…” He pauses, like he’s deliberating, like he’s preparing himself, and adds, “Because I think you love me, too.”

“Love,” Eddie repeats. “Present tense.”

“Am I wrong?”

Eddie’s heart skips several beats, does flips and dives and spins like a top. He hit him in the head with a baseball bat, but he wasn’t scared, not really. He’d recognized him, Richie, and he’d known deep down he could trust him, that he knew him, that Richie was…

That he was someone he knew. That he was Eddie’s someone. His person.

It turned back on, then, or it came out of hibernation, or it strengthened, knowing Richie was there.

He loved him.

He loves him.

Sometimes it is just as simple as that. Sometimes it is just that easy. Not everything needs a great reveal, a twisting storyline. It just is.

“Richie,” he says, soft, unsure. “When you wished, did you give it a time frame? Do we get to keep this?”

“I don’t remember,” Richie admits, “but it’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you.”

“Stop quoting that stupid fucking song,” Eddie snaps. His whole body shakes, trembles, feels like it’s not even his, and he realizes now how much this means to him, how much Richie showing up through his window, bleeding and bruised and ruined, changed everything for him. He can’t… it can’t… “You don’t get to say things like that to me, Richie.”

“Why not? It’s true, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is,” Eddie snips, unable to hear himself over the roaring in his ears. “You knew the answer before you even said it. You’ve always known. But you don’t get to say that to me. _You don’t._ Not after four years. Not when you don’t know if you get to stay—or I get to stay—or if it’s not going to _matter_ —”

“I’d relive this day over and over again if I have to,” Richie tells him. “I’d let the fucking werewolf rip me to _shreds_ —”

Eddie blinks. “The werewolf.” He thinks back on it, on the things they’d been afraid of when they were young. Places in town that were creepy, like the train tracks, the house, the Standpipe. A mummy, and a leper, fire and large birds. Blood. Growing up. A brother’s death. A brother’s blame. A basement. _The Teenage Werewolf._ “It,” he says. “It did this to you.”

The same way It plucked at his dreams, sent him balloons, restored pieces of his memory. It is playing a game with them, like It always does. They’re nothing but the pawns in a chess game. This whole _town_ has been nothing but pieces of a game, replaceable and insignificant.

“Richie, what did you wish for?”

“You,” he answers, “but I’m afraid I may have wished for something else, too.”

Eddie runs his tongue over his teeth. “You _were_ always talking in circles.”

“That hasn’t changed either,” Richie says, light and amused. “I talk my mouth off. I trust you. I love you.”

His heart leaps into his throat. Eddie speaks around it, sort of strangled. “The big three.”

“The big three,” Richie repeats. He forces himself up with a groan, stretches his arms over his head, pressing down on his toes, all but reaching the ceiling.

“Hey, don’t do that,” Eddie says, whirling around. “I’m not done.”

“I’m fine,” Richie tells him. “You’re just paranoid. Look, I’m not… the magic, or whatever, it’s—”

Eddie shakes his head. “I don’t care,” he says. “You’re going to get infected without the proper medical attention and it will _not_ be my fault.” He squares his chin, glaring, and falters when he sees how close Richie is now.

“You know when I quote that song, I mean it, right?” Richie asks on the ghost of a breath. He can hardly be heard over the rush of the shower to Eddie’s right. The temperature climbs because of it, making the air in the room wet and thick. It settles on Eddie’s skin, pink and slick. The hairs at the nape of his neck stick to the skin there. “The one by Toto.”

“It’s a song that makes no sense,” Eddie retorts. “I bless the rains down in Africa? Sure, whatever. You do that.”

Richie face twitches with the hint of a smile. “It’s Stan’s favorite song.”

“It would be Stan’s favorite song,” Eddie says. “He was also obsessed with _Don’t You Want Me._ You gonna quote that, too, since you get all your personality traits from Stan’s taste in music?”

This time he does smile, big and shit-eating, splitting his face. “Don’t,” he begins, slow and deliberate, “don’t you want me? You know I don’t believe you when you say that you don’t need me.”

Eddie pinches the flesh by his belly button. “I never said that.”

“Then what did you say, Eds?” Richie asks. “Because I mean it. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. It’s gonna take a lot—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Eddie interrupts, digging his nails into his skin harder.

“Ow, dude, I wasn’t even going to say what you think I was, I was going to say it’s gonna take more than a werewolf to—”

Eddie grabs him by the back of the neck, both hands slotting together, and tugs him down, rendering him speechless. Richie stumbles from the force, his own hands holding the sink behind him, barricading Eddie against it. This close up, Eddie can see Richie’s pupils dilate, can feel the jumping of his pulse at his throat. Nose to nose, he breathes, “Gonna take some time to do the things we never had.”

“Ooh, ooh,” Richie replies, because of course he does, and Eddie slots his mouth over his.

The kiss is hard and insistent at first, all crashing teeth, and bitten lips, and searching hands. It slows after a while, like the sense of urgency has escaped them, and Richie helps hoist Eddie up, balancing him on the edge of the sink. Eddie has never kissed anyone before, but it’s easy. It’s simple. He doesn’t know why everyone fusses over it, like it is a hard thing to do, but maybe not everyone is always in love with the person they’re kissing. That could be a pretty important fact, but he doesn’t know anything about that.

Eddie is sweaty and drenched beneath his shirt, clinging to him and then Richie when he slides his hands up and under. His touch feels hotter than the room does, and Eddie gasps against his mouth. Richie makes some kind of appreciative noise in the back of his throat and comes in closer, making it feel like they’re more one person than they are two.

They stay there for a long, long time, longer than Eddie would normally, given the whole thing with his mother down the hall, and long enough for the shower spray to turn cold.

Richie pulls away from Eddie’s mouth, presses soft kisses to the line of his jaw, his lobe, the skin behind his ear. Eddie parts his lips to say _Don’t do that, my mom will see,_ to say _Richie,_ to—he doesn’t know—make a particularly pleased sort of mewl when Richie bites down on a sensitive part of his neck, cancelling the first thing out because Eddie will _die_ if Richie stops—

But he doesn’t say any of that. It’s not even on his radar. He says, “I need to answer the phone,” and pulls Richie’s face back to his, kissing him on the mouth.

“Mm, okay,” Richie replies. He sucks his lower lip into his mouth, between his teeth, and then says, “Wait, what?”

Eddie blinks, disappointed when he moves away completely, too far away for Eddie coax him back. “What?”

“What’d you say?” Somehow Richie’s glasses got shoved in his hair. He pulls them down, looks at them, takes the hem of Eddie’s shirt and cleans them off.

“I… uh…” Eddie wracks his brain, coming up empty, focused entirely on the bright red color of Richie’s lips. “I think I said—I have to answer the phone?”

“Do you hear it?”

“No?”

“Are you expecting a call?”

_Yes._

“No one ever calls me,” Eddie says.

_They do now. They know, Eddie. You need to answer the phone._

Eddie frowns. “Did you hear that?”

Richie’s glasses fog up again, so soon after he’s cleared them off. “Hear what? I don’t hear anything. Is your mom coming? I can hide in the—”

Eddie presses his palm to his mouth. It’s warm and throbbing. “Shhh.”

 _He’s got the phone now,_ the voice says. _He’s dialing. You have seven minutes._

“I have to answer the phone,” Eddie says hurriedly. “Someone is calling, and I have to—my mom can’t—”

“Who?”

_A friend. Go, Eddie. Answer the phone. It will wake your mother if you don’t._

“I don’t know. Someone I know.” Eddie casts a glance at Richie. “Does anyone know you’re here?”

“Even I didn’t know I’d be here,” Richie answers, “but if it’s someone you know, it’s gotta be one of the others. They’d be the only ones to…”

_Four minutes, Edward._

“Shit.” Eddie wipes his hands on the front of his shirt, like that’ll do anything, pushes himself off the sink, and struggles with the doorknob. It’s wet, just like everything else in this room. What a profoundly stupid idea it was to turn the shower on, but he really thought Richie would start screaming. He finally unlocks it, clicks it open. “Turn the shower off,” he orders. “I’ll meet you back in my room. Be _quiet,_ Richie.”

“Wait, let me come with you.” Richie fumbles with the taps, cuts the water, and smacks his shoulder against the wall. “Fuck. _Jesus._ Ow. What the—”

“I said _be quiet!_ ” Eddie hisses. “And you should’ve let me finish stitching you up.”

“Not like that would stop the pain, Eduardo,” Richie whispers back furiously, “and I was pretty preoccupied with you, you know, loving me back.”

Eddie darts down the hall, light on his feet, careful to avoid the places where the wood creaks and cracks and groans, and skips that one step on the stairs entirely. He hopes Richie is smart enough to copy him. “I never said that,” he says over his shoulder, slipping into the kitchen.

“ _Of course it is,_ ” Richie recites. “If that’s as good as I’m gonna get, I’ll take it.” He stops at the table, plucks a banana from the bowl. “Hey, can I eat this?”

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Eddie says, “but get out of the way of the door. If she sees you—”

_Ringing in three, two, one…_

He doesn’t finish his sentence, grabs the phone from the hook as it starts to rattle, and kicks Richie away from the doorway, forcing him into a chair. On the terrible off chance Sonia wakes up and comes downstairs, she’ll see Eddie on the phone first—a big no-no—before she even catches a glimpse of Richie—

Who is happily munching away on his fruit, seemingly careless.

“Hello?”

“Eddie,” Stan Uris says, “hi! Tell me Richie is with you and not dead in a ditch.”

“Looks like he should be dead in a ditch, but he’s here,” Eddie replies. “I’m looking right at him.”

Around a mouthful of banana, Richie says, “Is that Stan? Tell him I forgive him for abandoning me.”

“I didn’t abandon him,” Stan insists. “He’s the one who tripped and interacted with the thing.”

“Just left me for dead,” Richie bemoans. “My best friend in the entire world. Not a care in the world.”

“Okay, he’s fine,” Stan decides. “Look, I’m trying to get everyone together. We need to talk. Can the two of you meet us at the Barrens at lunch?”

Eddie glances at the clock. _8:14 AM._ “I can do my best,” he replies, “but I haven’t exactly…” _left my house in years, and my mom doesn’t go anywhere, and I can’t sneak past her without her knowing._ “Twelve or one?”

Stan exhales, says something to someone else in the room with him, and replies, “It doesn’t matter. We’ll wait. Make sure you bundle up. It’s going to get cold later.”

“Yeah, I heard,” Eddie says. “A cold front is moving in.”

“I said that mainly for Richie. He’s a fucking idiot and won’t wear a winter coat until he’s blue from hypothermia.”

“You aren’t wrong.”

“Okay, I’m going to try to catch Bev before she leaves for school,” Stan tells him. “I’ll see you soon.” He pulls away, like he’s going to hang up, and then brings the phone back to his face. “Happy birthday, Eddie.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: loves a slow burn  
> also me: cannot write a slow burn because it makes me angry


	6. for, like, the first time ever, i'm completely free

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Let’s go. Lead the way, Frodo.”
> 
> Richie’s mouth twitches. “No.”
> 
> “You said—“
> 
> “I know what I said, dude, but you’re not wearing shoes and I don’t wanna hear about your frozen toes.” 
> 
> Eddie opens his mouth, snaps it shut, and looks down at his feet. Yep. Just his socks. “Right,” he says. “Please hold.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello.... it's been a v long time, but in my defense eddie and richie did NOT want to leave the house. it took me this long to convince them to continue on with the story, but we have agreed on the path we need to go, meaning i took literal notes on my own story and then watched tangled and took notes on THAT. we have a PLAN. it is written down. i can never forget it.
> 
> please forgive me for managing to write two other fics before even contemplating updating this by accepting my gift of a 20,000 word chapter update! :~)

1

Eddie’s mouth moves, but Richie doesn’t hear the words that come out of it. He watches his lips part, overcome with the knowledge he has of them. Soft. Cautious. Tasting of cherry and the unmistakable wax of Chapstick. He sees the whites of his two front teeth, the pink of his tongue. Eddie’s mouth is still kind of swollen. Richie definitely imagines the indentation on his lower lip, made from him when he bit down on it there, minutes ago in a hot, hot bathroom. 

Richie chews on his banana. It’s tasteless mush now, settling in his cheeks like he’s a hamster. He blinks, continues to watch, to observe, and never understands anything. 

All there is is Eddie in front of him, speaking to him, and if he focuses hard enough, he can pretend these four years haven’t passed the way they have. He spent a good portion of being twelve and thirteen just _staring_ at Eddie, loving that he prattled on and on and _on,_ giving Richie an excuse to look at him. He never knew a thing he said back then. It’s kind of almost the same now. 

Except now there’s a lot more he should be paying attention to, and he knows that, but he can’t help it. 

Eddie wrinkles his nose as he says something else, scratches the skin by his ear. His hair is still a colossal mess, but it’s unclear if it’s from sleeping, the humidity in the bathroom, or Richie’s hands. 

Richie blinks, swallows his fruit (gross), and thinks very acutely, almost very loudly, that Eddie is the cutest person he’s ever seen. God, how has he been so in love with him for this long? How has he been _the same_ for this long? Is it pathetic? The jury’s out on that one, but Richie doesn’t want to know the answer. He thinks he already knows. 

“ _Ow,_ ” he yelps, louder than intended.

Eddie kicks him in the shin _again,_ in the same fucking spot. “Shut up,” he hisses, pointing upstairs with an angry, assertive flick of his finger. “She could literally wake up any minute.” 

“No need to _kick_ me,” Richie grumbles.

“No need to _yell,_ ” Eddie retorts, “and there was a reason! You’re not paying attention to me.” 

Richie fiddles with the banana peel in front of him, rips it into even more pieces. He gets the stringy parts stuck beneath his nail. “I am paying attention to you.” 

“Not to what I’m saying,” Eddie explains. “I need you to listen to me, Rich.” 

“I _am_ listening.”

“No, you’re doing that thing where you stare at me while I talk,” Eddie argues. “Don’t think I didn’t know.” 

Richie flushes. “I just like looking at you,” he says, which is not what he really wants to say, because _embarrassing,_ but. 

Eddie’s ears go scarlet, but he maintains eye contact as he replies, “I like looking at you, too.” 

Richie curls his toes into the bottoms of his feet, pressing them into the floor. He feels almost… uncomfortable with this information. Self-conscious. It’s what he wants to hear, no doubt, but it’s also… it’s unnerving, jarring, scary, maybe, hearing that someone likes to look at him. Like he’s _worth_ looking at. He smiles a bit hesitantly and ducks his head to pick at the placemat in front of him. It matches the weird vibe going on in this kitchen, all, like, wicker and white. Pristine, like nothing ever gets messy here. He rips the edge of it, then tries to piece it together again, like he’s got the power to fix things. It’s just to have something to do with his hands, his arms, his entire upper body, all wound up with that anxious energy Eddie’s compliment has given him. 

And then, because authenticity is frightening on the best of days, let alone the day you are reunited with one of your best friends (and the love of your life), Richie says, “You're only saying that now because you get off on blood and bruises.” 

Eddie’s shoulders sag, his brow furrows, and he kicks at Richie again. This time Richie is waiting for it, and he moves out of the way just in time. Eddie hits the leg of his chair instead. He makes a face, biting down on his lip, and jerks back. 

“Hurts, right?” Richie teases. 

“Shut up,” Eddie snaps. He contorts his body, leaning only the left side down to rub at his toes. “While the bruises are quite loud and interesting, I like looking at you because I _like_ you, dipshit.”

Richie presses his finger into the rip so hard it turns red, throbbing. He feels his heartbeat in each of his aches—his shoulder, his knee, surprisingly, the back of his head, his cheek. “You just remembered me.”

“I don’t think so,” Eddie admits, the red bleeding from his ears to the apples of his cheeks. “I… maybe not _you,_ but there has to be a reason that I…” He trails off, clears his throat, and looks towards the cabinet where Richie recalls his mother storing all eighty thousand medications they owned. Eddie does not continue and Richie doesn’t press. There’s more there, but if Eddie doesn’t want to share, he doesn’t have to. The _I don’t think so_ is enough for him.

He hooks his foot around Eddie’s ankle. Presses it against the jut of the bone there. His toes crack and he has to fix his positioning, but then the next thing he knows they’re playing footsie, like they’re, he doesn’t know, hiding their relationship from everyone at a dinner party, or at the lunchroom at school, or…

The illusion shatters the second Eddie says, “Stan wants us to meet up at the Barrens.” 

“The Barrens?” Richie repeats. “Like… where we used to hang out?”

“I assume so,” Eddie says, “unless there’s another Barrens I don’t know about that you all go to these days.” 

Richie gnaws on his lower lip, fighting the wave of nausea that crashes over him. “We, uh,” he starts. Stops. “We don’t really… not all of us hang out together anymore. Like. All of us.”

“Oh,” Eddie says. “Okay. Um. But you, like, you still go to the Barrens? With the quarry?”

He nods. Rips more of the placemat. The Barrens with the quarry, and the cliff that practically overlooks all of Derry, and the junkyard, and the long expanse of trees and bushes and rocks, and the clubhouse. The Barrens with the clubhouse. Jesus. He was just— _he was just…_

The tears at his shoulder seem to vibrate with pain at the mere thought. It’s like he can feel the claws break through his skin again, hot and sharp. He glances down, just to make sure he’s not, y’know, getting attacked again, and watches blood trickle down along the side of his chest. It gets stuck in his armpit, clinging to the hair there. He’s still not wearing a shirt. 

“You okay?” Eddie asks. 

Richie lets go of the placemat to press his fingers to the drops of blood rolling slow but steady to the waist of his pants. He tries to catch them, smearing them along his body. Blood stains, he recalls, and Eddie’s mom doesn’t need to ask more questions than she ought to. 

“Richie.”

He hears him, but he’s focused on the stained tips of his fingers—sticky, wet, red. Then his attention is captured by the long lines at his shoulder. The one Eddie managed to stitch up looks like it is quickly going through the phases of healing: scar, dark bruise, light bruise, almost perfect skin. Something tells him to tug at the knot of the fishing line, and he listens. It unravels from his injury and coils in front of him on the rose pattern of the placemat he’s effectively ruined. 

The other two look like they’re about to get infected. Crusty. They’re yellowing in that ugly sort of way, the one that worries people. If he touches them ( _he won’t_ ), he knows how they’ll feel—kind of grainy and full of pus, slimy in a way that makes him want to vomit (more than he already does).

Interesting, though. He wonders if he should ask Eddie to sew him up again. Maybe the magic is in that, in him caring. 

“ _Richie._ ” The voice is poignant. Stern. A bit annoyed. He’s not paying attention to him again and Eddie hates it. “The Barrens.”

“Right. Yeah. Sorry.” Richie looks up, catalogs that request for later. “Um, did he say why he—“

He stops, words piling on the tip of his tongue, and stares—not in the way he normally does, but in a way that makes dread curdle in his stomach and fear rise like bile. His knee hits the table, a jerking reaction to the Eddie that sits before him, skin a gray, deadish hue, eyes a bright, horrifying yellow, lips ripped apart, spread in a smile that has the hair on the back of Richie’s neck standing upright. He has _goosebumps._ Eddie meets his gaze, steady, ready for an attack. The dark gunk that haunts Richie’s nightmares drips down his chest, leaking from a nasty gash in his cheek. ( _That’s a new one._ )

“Yeah,” It-Eddie says. “He wants to get you all together so you can defeat me once and for all, which.” It smiles, teeth too sharp and long and _mean_ to be Eddie’s. _Real-_ Eddie’s. “Can’t be done, I’ll have you know. You have to be united, _Richie,_ and I know for certain you’d throw Billy-boy into my sewer for a life with Eddie. Tell me when the jealousy started, Trashmouth. Was it before or _after_ he stole his brother from me?”

Richie swallows. “I never said that.”

It leans over. “But you thought about it. I heard you. I hear everything.”

“I did _not,_ ” Richie insists. He never… not on his _own,_ okay? It has been pulling shit to the forefront of his mind for the _past—how long has it been?—_ twelve hours. Richie would never. “Stop trying to play games with me.”

It uses Eddie’s arm to wipe at the blood on his mouth. “Everything’s a game,” It replies. “Your whole life has been a game, don’t you know?” 

“Leave,” Richie orders. He tries not to recoil as It leans closer, staining the table with dark, black splotches on the wood. “I’m good at games. You lose this round.”

“Just because you’re good at Street Fighter doesn’t mean you’re good at _games,_ ” It says. “Tell me: before _or_ after?”

“I’m not jealous of _Bill,_ ” Richie snaps, “and I’m not answering your asinine questions—“

“—ooh, _asinine,_ ” It repeats gleefully. “He knows big words. He’s _smart._ Done trying to hide it now?” 

Richie doesn’t deign It with a response, clenching his jaw and staring forward. 

That doesn’t stop It, though. “It was before, wasn’t it, Richie? You’ve been jealous of him basically your whole life. Let me see if I can guess.” Eddie’s head tilts, mouth pursed. His fingers itch closer, like they want to touch Richie’s, and Richie pulls back. “Eddie had a crush on Bill, didn’t he? You didn’t like that because you had a crush on Eddie, but that’s all fine, isn’t it? You were young, you didn’t know, it didn’t matter… and then Bill got Georgie back and you couldn’t handle that _once again_ Bill got everything he ever wanted—“ 

“Shut _up,_ ” Richie shouts. “Shut up and get out of my head, stop manipulating my thoughts, and get _out_ of this _house._ You don’t belong here. You can’t _be_ here.” 

“I can be anywhere and everywhere,” It says. “Don’t you know that? This isn’t your town, or your friend, or your life. It’s _mine._ Everything in Derry is mine.” The smile sharpens. Widens. Richie feels mesmerized by the action, by the gaze. He all but falls into it, feels its power. He blinks, tries to shake it, but gets lost in it all over again. “But if you just admit it… if you tell me… I’ll share some of it with you. I’ll share _this_ with you.” He waves Eddie’s arm out, knocks an apple to the ground with its sweeping gesture. “Eddie. I’ll let you have him, just give me something in return.” 

Richie has to bite down on his tongue, on his _cheek,_ to keep the words to himself. It’s there in the back of his mind. It’s there: _I’ll trade you for him. Take Bill._ But Richie doesn’t say it. Doesn’t believe it. He grips the edge of the table so hard he feels his nails crack, feels blood well up and sting in his nail beds. 

“Say it,” It orders. “ _Say it._ ”

“No,” Richie says. “It’s not true. I won’t say it.”

The laugh that escapes Eddie’s mouth is high-pitched, annoying, and fake. It grates on Richie’s ears, makes him shut his eyes, tight and painful. “So you tell the truth now, Richie? You’ve never told a lie?” 

Richie blinks, lids pried open forcibly, and Eddie’s dead face is so close, _too_ close, making Richie jump back. He doesn’t smell right—rancid, dirty, _decaying._ It says, “Wanna play Truth or Dare? You’re good at games, right?” 

“I don’t want to play any of your games,” Richie retorts. 

“Alright.” Eddie shrugs, looking rather put out, and falls back into his chair. He slouches, which doesn’t look right on him. “Clock’s ticking. Use your time wisely.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Richie demands. 

It-Eddie merely grins, big and awful. It looks like he’s drowning in the black blood that drips from him, that coats his skin and _sticks._ “I wouldn’t waste it,” he says. “It’s so… fleeting. Time.” He captures Richie in his gaze again. “ _Life._ ” 

And then he spits up, choking on sludgy vomit. Richie watches his eyes flicker, yellow to brown, glazed over and lifeless, bright and aware, and is horrified by what he sees, what he feels. His heart beats hard and fast in his chest, breaks his ribs, and bursts from the cavity, a pulpy mess. Eddie’s cheek oozes fresh blood, unstoppable. His skin pales, fades, cracks and breaks. He is but a shell of himself, a skeleton, by the time Richie shakes himself free of the control. 

He scrunches his face up, head pounding above his right eye. Shoving his glasses into his hair, Richie presses his hands to his face, heaves a heavy breath, and swallows back the bile that fills his mouth. 

Cold fingers grip his wrists, slide up his hands, and slip through his own, gently prying them off. Richie keeps his eyes closed, afraid, and lets It finally get him. Lets him succumb to it all, since he hasn’t been able to escape, since he just _led_ It here. To Eddie, who might not even be real. This _house_ might not even be real. Richie could just be sitting in an abandoned, decrepit building, recreating a place he once knew with a person he once loved, talking to darkness and shadows, cornered by an evil that’s favorite form is a clown from, like, the fucking _eighteen hundreds._ He thought he was somewhere, thought he’d made some great fucking stride, that, for once, all his wishes were about to come true—every carving on the Bridge, every candle he’s blown out, every _11:11,_ every shooting star—but in reality he’s just a mess, high and bleeding out. Pathetic. 

“In and out, okay?” Eddie coaxes, tangling their hands together. He squeezes twice and Richie copies the movement. He’s shaking. No. Trembling, which is somehow worse. “Just like you used to do with me. Slow. Steady. Count to three and let go and do it again.” 

His heart slows a little, sets a deliberate and familiar rhythm, and Richie’s mouth feels less like it’s full of cotton. He still feels jittery, scared, but the heat at his lap and the hands in his seem to steal those nerves from him, absorbing them.

“What happened?” Eddie asks. 

Richie shrugs. His eyes are still closed. 

“Rich,” Eddie says, and it’s different from the _Richie_ and the _Trashmouth_ It likes to call him, but he’s still nervous. What if he’s figured it out? “C’mon, Rich, talk to me. _Look_ at me.” 

Richie squeezes his fingers again and maybe it’s a little too tight, but Eddie doesn’t say anything. “I can’t.”

“Why not?” 

It comes from him unbidden; he seems almost incapable of keeping them hidden, his emotions. He tells Eddie, “I’m scared.” 

“Scared of what? Scared of me?” 

_The Barrens,_ he wants to say. 

“That you’re not really you,” he says instead. The face from before fills his mind; he suppresses the shudder that takes him over when Eddie cups his cheek. Cold fingers. Racing pulse.

“I’m me,” Eddie says.

“How am I supposed to know that?” Richie asks. “It already knows so much about me, about _us,_ that I can’t… I don’t…” 

_Did he kiss a corpse?_

_Is he even alive?_

_Are_ any _of them alive?_

“When we were in middle school, you used to write me little notes and stick them in my locker,” offers Eddie. His voice is low. Soft. Only meant for Richie. There are no edges to it, no splintered consonants or harsh vowels. It doesn’t feel like a threat or an attack. It feels… it feels sweet. “I would keep them all. There’s a, uh. There’s a shoebox in the corner of my closet. They’re all in there.” 

Richie lets out a breath. “I forgot,” he says. 

“Yeah,” Eddie murmurs. “I used to sit in my closet when I was upset or stressed or… well, you know how my mom is. Being the only person I was ever allowed to see or talk to, it was a lot. I would hide in the closet just to get away from her, and… and I found them. I didn’t think they were mine.” 

Richie opens his eyes, but keeps his gaze on Eddie’s hand, still in his own. He can’t see for shit, but it comforts him that there are no talons there. No claws. Just long, blurry fingers and pale skin. He rubs his thumb over a knuckle, feels the smoothness. Normal, normal, _normal._ “Why not?” 

“It was hard to believe anyone loved me like that.”

“Like what?” 

“In such an… in such an unassuming way,” Eddie says. “You know, just… with my mom… it’s different. The way you wrote the notes, it’s like you liked me for who I was, not who you could turn me into.” 

“I did. I do.” Richie looks up and meets Eddie’s eyes, brown and clear and… and perfect, actually. He squints, tries to bring him into focus, and delights in the pink of his cheeks, alive and full of heat. “You really didn’t think they were for you?” 

“I had all these memories,” Eddie says, reaching up to pull Richie’s glasses out of his hair and onto his nose. It brings back his colors, pretty like a painting, and Richie’s eyes roam. They drink him in, pick him apart, searching for every sign of humanity he knows. “But I didn’t know the people in them, or a time where I was that… wherever my memories went, they took away the feelings I had, too. I didn’t know why I would ever be so happy or so carefree, and these notes… it felt like I’d found something that belonged to someone else, you know, like someone left them behind when they moved out or something. It didn’t make any sense that they would be… that they would be mine.”

Richie swallows. It hurts, like he has a sore throat. “I started writing you those when I, um.” He pauses, stammers some more, because _honesty and feelings?_ It’s, like, not what he’s good at, but that lock and key he’s got holding them back isn’t working anymore. “My feelings changed for you in, like, seventh grade? Maybe? I, um. I didn’t know what that meant and when I asked my sister, she was all snooty and told me to, like, write it down in a diary because no one wanted to hear it? And I didn’t want a diary because I have too many thoughts to write down, like, _so many,_ so eventually I just, like, started writing to you, I guess? And then I had a pile of these stupid things all for you so I thought… I would just give them to you.” He blinks, presses his lips together. Pries them apart. “You really kept ‘em?” 

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Wanna see?”

“Anything to get into your bedroom, Eds.”

Eddie’s mouth quirks, like he’s trying to fight off a smile. “You’ve already been in my bedroom,” he reminds him.

“Always ruining my fun,” Richie accuses. 

“Am I really?”

“Nah,” Richie says. “Adding to it, more like.” 

Eddie lets himself smile at him this time and pushes himself to his feet. “Come on,” he says, offering up his free hand. “I’ll show you, but you need to be _quiet,_ okay?” 

Richie rolls his eyes but accepts the help up, standing over Eddie a good, he doesn’t know, four inches. They’re just holding hands now, both of them, in the middle of the kitchen. The sun hits one side of Eddie’s face, sets him aglow, sets him on _fire,_ and Richie is mesmerized by it. By his youth, and his realism, and the fact that he is here.

Still, he brings a knuckle up to brush across the planes of Eddie’s face. He feels warm. He feels muscle, and skin, and the long, strong bone of his nose. Eddie watches as he does it, pupils flickering like he, too, is committing this to memory. 

“What are you doing?” he asks as Richie’s thumb presses along the hair of his eyebrow.

Richie tugs on his ear. “Just checkin’.”

“And?”

“If it’s not you, I’ve made a very convincing hallucination,” Richie says. “The house, too. Your fridge moved.”

Eddie groans. “Ma made me feng shui two years ago. It was the worst. I think I’m more anxious because of it.”

“That may just be the house,” Richie suggests. “It’s real creepy.”

“You’re not wrong,” Eddie agrees. “There’s a creaky step on the stairs. Fourth one up. Skip it. It’ll wake her up for sure.”

“Aye, aye, captain.” Richie salutes. 

“I said _be quiet,_ Richie,” Eddie hisses with an exaggerated roll of his eyes. 

“I _was_ quiet!”

“You weren’t,” Eddie says, “and you aren’t.” He tugs him forward, tip-toeing through his own fucking house like he’s a guest, and Richie tries to follow him as best he can. 

He feels like his legs are too long for this, that he’s never learned to control them. They’re heavy and loud, even as he works so hard to keep them contained. He hops that fourth step, all but trips the rest of the way up, and is haphazardly tugged the rest of the way, like Eddie doesn’t trust him in his own body. He’s not sure whether to be offended or not.

Eddie’s room is still a mess, lamp on the ground, bulb pieces piled neatly against the wall. His sheets are tangled and stained. Richie’s jacket with the shredded sleeve is carefully thrown over the chair. His shirt is in worse shape, folded on top of it, whatever is left of it. Richie refrains from touching his shoulder again, seeing how much blood ended up on his clothes. 

He looks away, following Eddie to his closet. They’ve grown too much to fit in here comfortably, but they make do. Eddie presses his back against the wall, his feet in Richie’s lap, and unearths a Converse shoebox, beaten and dented. He lets it sit on his knees, right in between them. 

Richie isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do now. 

He watches Eddie tap his fingers against the side of it, a slow, steady beat. He doesn’t remember how many he’s ever written him, doesn’t even remember what half of them said; they were just mindless thoughts half the time. Just… things that popped into his head. Often they were not about Eddie. Most of them were, but sometimes it was just…

“ _CONVINCED—_ all caps— _greenfeld only buys one shirt in every color,_ ” Eddie says. The way he pitches his voice, the way he enunciates, makes him sound just like Richie.

“You been working on that?” Richie asks, delighted. “Thought Voices were my thing.”

“Uh, no, not really.” Eddie plucks another one out of the pile. “ _You ever wonder what the Star Wars word thing would be for your life? Mine would probably start off with Richie Tozier dies in Algebra but the powers that be resurrect him for he is the only one who can defeat Math for good_.” Eddie drops that one. “Math is capitalized, by the way.”

Richie twists his mouth, unamused with the actions of his youth. He can do so much better than that now. Defeating math? Please. “You sure, dude? You sound just like me.” 

“No practice needed when you’re already the voice inside my head,” Eddie replies. He jerks a little, like he’s surprised he said that, but then takes out another note. “ _I like your tie-dye sweater. You look nice._ ”

Of _course_ all the light filters in on Richie’s face, illuminating the flush of his cheeks. Feelings are dumb. Feelings are stupid. He wishes his body didn’t react like this, kind of wishes he didn’t have these in the first place—but then he sees Eddie and the way he’s biting down on his lower lip, almost smug but mainly incredibly shy. He blinks at him, swallows. “It was nice.” He can almost see it now, white, purple, and pink. The sleeves were too long, so he had to roll them up to his elbows. “I always liked spring colors.” 

“Yeah, purple always looked good on you,” Eddie murmurs. “ _Stole your Twizzlers. Left this note._ Fucking rude.” He pulls another, and another, reading them one after the other. 

Richie has vivid recollections of writing these—hunched over his books in science, ripping them out of the spiral notebooks he should’ve been using for actual schoolwork, and tearing up the ones that went a little _too_ far. He’d burnt a particularly telling one on the wick of his sister’s lemon-scented candle when she was in the shower. 

“ _Want to ditch that dumb pep rally and go to the Barrens? I can definitely do more flips than you._ ” Eddie scoffs. “Which I remember you _couldn’t._ ”

“I let you win,” Richie retorts quickly. The word _Barrens_ has him at fearful attention.

“Mhm,” Eddie says. “Sure. But. Um.” He reads off another. Richie can see where he’s scribbled out half the slip, big black loops of his pen. Eddie says _you should keep growing your hair out, fight your mom on it._

Richie still stands by that, but he can tell Eddie’s hesitance is not from reading four-year-old notes, even if they aren’t as subtle as Richie’d hoped. Sue him. He was, like, twelve. 

Still embarrassing though. 

“What’s up?” he asks. 

“Did you really mean all of these?” 

“Yeah,” Richie says. He picks one up himself. “Especially this one. _Does Stan’s head look too big for his body or am I just being mean today?_ ” 

“You were just being mean,” Eddie says seriously. “ _Got all these new comics in the mail. We should go get milkshakes and read them._ ”

“And you aren’t really asking about these,” Richie says. “ _Come over for dinner my mom is making lasagna._ No punctuation. My handwriting looks nervous. Ask me what you really want to ask me.” 

“ _I miss having classes with you. You’re the only one who makes Franklin’s class bearable,_ ” Eddie says. “It’s about the Barrens. Um. I think we should talk about it.” 

Richie’s spine stiffens. He keeps one eye on Eddie, face half-hidden in the shadows cast from the various articles of clothing above them. He looks the same, no weird gaping holes or artificially colored eyes. No teeth. No blood. Just a face… a very pretty face. Richie digs into the box again, pulls three notes at once. There are _so many_ in here, Jesus Christ. He’s such a sap. 

“ _Is that my sweat…_ ” Richie trails off, swallows the rest of the sentence back. _Is that my sweatshirt,_ it says, with four question marks. It goes on, more word vomit from his adolescent self. How had he thought this was normal and not confession after confession after confession? _Cute, cute, cute!!!!!_

Farther down, he wrote, _keep it :)_

“What about it?” he finally asks. He folds the note up and puts it back. 

“Stan wants us all to meet there,” Eddie tells him. He wiggles his toes into the side of Richie’s thigh. Richie bats them out of the way. “I think we should go.” 

“ _You_ think we should go,” Richie repeats. “You, not—“

“No, me,” Eddie says. “Stan made it sound like it was important and as much as I love spending time with you, I’d kinda like to see everyone else too.” 

“You _don’t_ want to spend the rest of your life in this closet with me and only me?” Richie asks, appalled. “The audacity. The horror. The _hurt_ I feel.” 

Eddie digs his toes into him again. “Shut up,” he says. “I wanted to know your opinion. Obviously we won’t go if you don’t want to.”

“Obviously we won’t…” Richie starts to repeat. “Wait, what? We’re basing it off _me?_ You’re the one who…”

“Yeah, but.” Eddie takes the note from him, skims it with a furrowed brow, and looks up. Half his face gets covered by the long length of a worn shirt. Richie has the perfect view of his neck. There’s a freckle right in the middle. “I don’t know what happened exactly, but you get this weird look on your face every time the Barrens gets brought up, so, like, if you don’t want to go, we don’t—“

“I’m not going to let a little werewolf continue to keep you locked up in this house,” Richie says. He grinds his teeth just a bit. Ignores the twinge of his shoulder, the way he can feel the rip of claws. He focuses on Eddie, who has somehow been convinced to stay here, coddled and protected and made to fear by his mother. But Richie doesn’t see that, not any of it. He never has. Eddie has always been so brave to him, even when he was terrified. Had never actually ever listened to his mother, so it’s unclear why he did now and for so long. 

_There was more than his mother’s influence at play,_ a voice tells him. Not his, obviously. Something else. 

Richie shakes it away as a bundle of fabric gets tossed in his face. It smells kind of old, kind of musty, but also like Eddie. 

“Kept it,” Eddie says. “Probably won’t fit well, you’re way longer than I remember, but.”

“You kept it?”

“You told me to,” Eddie says, waving the note in his face. “Right here. See!”

Richie can’t. It’s too close to his face. But it doesn’t matter. He knows what it said; he wrote it himself, a frenzied mess of cartoon hearts bursting out of his every orifice. No wonder they separated the two of them in class. How did he get _anything_ done?

“Put it on,” Eddie orders. 

“Why? You distracted, Eds?”

“Ooh, yeah, your mangled shoulder is really turning me on,” Eddie retorts. “Cover it up, asshole.”

Richie puckers his lips and surges forward as if to kiss him, making obnoxious sounds with his mouth. Eddie, to his surprise, doesn’t move, just shifts his face so Richie lands on his cheek. It’s wet and kind of sloppy, but Eddie merely smiles at him, a toothy sort of thing. 

“I’ll clean them again,” he promises. 

“Before we go,” Richie says, hot at the back of his neck. He slides into the hoodie, finds that the sleeves are too short but the rest of it is fine, and shoves those up to his elbows. “To the Barrens,” he clarifies. The word tastes like ash on his tongue. _Blech._

Eddie surveys him for a bit, eyes big and concerned. Then he fishes another note out of the box. “ _Do you have to go home straight after school? Stan is starting in the baseball game at 4._ ” He considers this one, looks at it the way he looked at Richie before. “Did I go to this?”

“Yeah,” Richie says. “You got grounded for, like, a week, though.”

“Typical,” Eddie mutters. “The thing with the werewolf… with It… it happened at the Barrens?” 

“Yeah. The clubhouse,” Richie says. “I’m assuming Stan doesn’t want to go back there so soon after, so I’m good with going.”

“ _Good?_ ” 

“I’m okay with going.”

“ _Okay?_ ”

“Alright, be quiet,” Richie says. “I’m fine with going to the Barrens. It’s daylight. The sun is out. Very strong today, but you can’t tell in here. You deserve some fresh air. I’m sure everyone would love to see you.”

Eddie reaches out and clutches his wrist, fingers cold against Richie’s staggering pulse. “You sound like even stepping a toe out of this house will march you to your death,” he says softly. “What _happened,_ Rich?”

What _didn’t?_ Every one of Richie’s nightmares come to life right before him, short of that god-awful Paul Bunyan statue terrorizing him in the middle of town. 

He forces a smile, hopefully more convincing than he feels—and hopefully Eddie doesn't remember what his real smiles actually look like—and uses his other hand to cover where Eddie’s holding him. “Nothing I can’t handle again, Eds,” he says. “You wanna go, we go. Easy as that.” 

“I’ll bring the baseball bat,” Eddie says. “Hit any wolves we see.”

“My hero.” Richie fakes a swoon. “You’ve got a mean swing, you know that?”

Eddie grins. “Yeah.” His mouth falters a bit as he touches the back of Richie’s head. His temple. “Sorry about that.” 

2

“ _Ow.”_

“You’re such a baby,” Eddie grumbles. “I’m almost done.” 

“It hurts, Eddie,” Richie whines. “You try getting stabbed with a sewing needle multiple times.”

Eddie leaves the needle in Richie’s shoulder and levels him with a look. “You _re-broke_ my arm.”

“ _Re-broke_ is not a word.”

“My arm was broken and then it was even _more_ broken,” Eddie retorts. “In four places! It never healed properly! Look at it.”

“I love this arm,” Richie says. “My favorite arm.”

“Shut _uuuuup._ ” Eddie resumes his activity, hardly giving Richie a chance to prepare. He holds him still, hums as he threads him together, and ignores the way Richie’s gaze warms him from the toes up. “The magic or whatever heals you fast anyway so it’s not like you’re experiencing a lot of pain.”

Richie slides his hand up Eddie’s back to his neck. “I’ve already experienced years of pain without you,” he replies. “The magic better cut me some slack.”

Eddie tugs rather hard on the knot of the last stitch, and then gently wipes at the blood that’s smeared over his skin. The washcloth is warm and damp. “Do you practice all your Disney prince lines in your mirror or something?”

“ _Disney prince lines?”_ Richie asks. “No. Can’t say I do. Why? Are they working?”

“Shut up,” Eddie says again. 

“Are they?” Richie prods.

“Shut _up._ ” Eddie drapes the washcloth over his shoulder, his wounds tied up and clean now. Water droplets run down the length of his chest and Eddie watches them almost shamelessly. “Shut up,” he repeats. “ _Shut up._ ” He holds Richie’s face in his hands, digs his fingers into his scalp right above his ears. 

“I haven’t said anything in the past two minutes,” Richie murmurs. 

They are nose to nose with each other. Eddie can only see him fully out of one eye. “It hasn’t been two minutes.”

“Fine. Minute.”

“Forty-five seconds tops,” Eddie mumbles. 

“Fine,” Richie allows. “Forty-five seconds. Are they working?”

Eddie sighs, almost bothered by the question, and says, “Yes,” before he presses his mouth to his. 

He’s a little nervous about it, honestly, it being his second kiss, like, ever, but Richie arches into it like it’s fresh out of a fucking romantic comedy. Like it’s raining outside and they’re reunited after days, weeks, months apart. Like it’s fucking _Sleepless in Seattle,_ which Eddie only saw because his cousins were in town that one time he was there and they dragged his aunt who dragged his mother who dragged him because she doesn’t trust him. You know, because he’s such a rule-breaking delinquent. 

Which. 

He tilts his head and licks further into Richie’s mouth, like he suddenly knows how to kiss somebody. He feels Richie’s touch, hot at his waist, pulling him closer. Eddie tumbles into his lap, as uncomfortable as it is on the toilet. The way he’s sitting on him, he can feel the tightness of his own thigh muscles. His toes are the only thing that touch the floor. 

Maybe he is a rule-breaking delinquent. 

Maybe everything his mother said about him was right. Maybe he is all those things she warned him he’d be. 

Maybe…

Richie mewls a little bit, pants into his mouth, and tugs him closer. A bite to the lip, a harder kiss, the calmness, numbness, almost, of being putty in someone’s hands…

Maybe Eddie doesn’t care if he’s all those things. Maybe he wants to be. 

He thinks there is no possible way the two of them could get any closer, but Richie manages it somehow. Eddie is hyper aware of his shoulder, though even when he jostles it, Richie doesn’t react, just kisses him again. Kisses him like it’s the last time, like he can’t get enough of him, like he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to do this again. 

The intensity of it is overwhelming, the _want._ Eddie has never been wanted like this—how he is presently, not how he could be in the future. And Richie wants _this,_ and what he remembers of him, four years ago, because the Eddie he remembers is the Eddie he really is, not this carved-out shell, filled with someone else’s anxieties and fears. This Eddie… he’s the Eddie he’s always wanted to be but wasn’t allowed. It’s who he really _is,_ who his mother tried to hide from herself, from the world, from _himself._ This Eddie—this Eddie is _worth it,_ and Eddie’s always known that somewhere inside, hasn’t he? 

_Yes._

The revelation (if it is one) has Eddie pulling at the hair at the nape of Richie’s neck, lifting his face, taking control, and he thinks very belatedly, very loosely, almost like someone is working the strings of his marionette doll, that things could (and may) get extremely out of hand when—

_THUMP_

_THUMP_

_THUMP_

“You are _wasting_ water, Edward,” Sonia calls, slamming her fist against the door. “Five minutes and you’re downstairs.” 

Eddie squeaks at the sound of her voice, jumping off of Richie like he’s been burnt. Like his mother is staring right at them. He scrubs his hands over his face, wet and bloody and stinging from antiseptic. He hits his hip against the side of the sink, which _hurts,_ and tries to get as much space between them as possible. 

“Right,” he says, “I, uh… I’ll be down in a sec.” He looks around, sticks his head under the spray of the water so it looks like he’s been showering in here, and towel-dries his hair. It sticks to the side of his face, his forehead, and feels heavy on his head. 

Richie catches the towel as he drops it and hangs it back up. 

“Um,” Eddie blurts. “I have to…” He thrusts his thumb behind him. “You should… you should go back to my room? I guess you could take the tree back down and I’ll try to leave. Not sure if I… actually, you go without me and I—“

“Nope,” Richie says. “We go together or I don’t go at all. You tell me when.” 

Eddie feels the heat in his cheeks hard and quick, like they’re in the process of getting sunburnt. “I have half of a plan.”

“Do you need help to make it whole?”

“No, it all depends on her,” Eddie answers. “I’ll try not to take too long.” 

“Okay,” Richie says. He stands, snags Eddie’s elbow before he can leave, and smiles down at him. Eddie is convinced his teeth _sparkle,_ which can’t be right. “Happy birthday since she didn’t say it.”

 _Ugh,_ Eddie thinks. He kind of wants to stay in this bathroom forever, but he also wants to go out there. _Outside._ A thrill races up his body, excited and a little nervous. It almost overpowers the anxiety he feels, the trepidation swirling in his gut at the mere thought of entering that kitchen again with her. 

“She won’t,” he tells him. His mother will ignore his birthday like she does every year, like she has been since he turned ten. She’ll ignore his next one, too, the big one that it is. He squeezes Richie’s arm. “Ten minutes.”

“You think?”

“If I’m persuasive enough.”

“Mm.” Richie hums. “Better make it fifteen, then.”

Eddie shoves him. “Shut up.”

“I’m gonna pick out your outfit or something.”

“Ew, don’t,” Eddie complains. “Clean up the mess you made in my room.”

Richie pulls a face. “ _Cleaning?_ Yuck.” 

(But the next time Eddie enters his bedroom, he’ll find it immaculate, cleaner than it had been before Richie tumbled in through the window.)

Eddie separates from him in the hallway; he watches him duck back into his room and close the door gently behind him. Even though the sound is nothing more than a light click, Eddie hears it like a gunshot, reverberating through his body, echoing through the house. He makes sure to stomp his feet as he goes down the stairs. Just in case. 

Without fail, his mother makes a comment on it. She calls him heavy footed, or something that’s like a compliment but isn’t. 

She’s at the table when he gets there, skimming the paper. Eddie lingers in the doorway, shoving his hands into the pockets of his pants, and watches her. She knows he’s there, tightening her grip on the paper. She tilts it, makes it impossible for him to even get a glimpse, but he sees it. 

The headline is big and bold. The boy from yesterday’s article has been found, his one arm torn from the socket. He’s died of blood loss and shock. He was six years old. They found him by the sewer on Witcham Street, the last place anyone had seen… the last place anyone had seen— _Georgie._

It comes to him like a punch to the gut: the months of worry, Bill’s ignorance and denial, the rest of them knowing more than he did, that Georgie was dead. That Georgie was _gone._

It takes him a moment or two (three, actually) to compose himself, the stressful memories filling him with an equal combination of misery and dread. He shakes them off and steels himself, preparing for what’s to come. 

Even though she knows he’s there and even though he knows _she_ knows he’s there, Eddie raps his knuckles against the doorframe. It’s the dining room, a common area, yet he feels the need to ask her permission to enter. To announce his arrival. Sonia hums at him, which he takes as a good sign, and taps her empty mug. 

Eddie swallows back his sigh and moves forward. He pours her a fresh cup of coffee, mixes in milk and sugar, and pulls out the chair beside her. He piles fruits onto his plate, picking them apart—three strawberries for him, another three for Richie. He takes two too many waffles (frozen, of course, his mother doesn’t _cook_ ) and debates the eggs before ultimately deciding against them. He rips apart an orange, puts half aside, and bites into a piece. The tangy, sweet juice bursts in his mouth. 

“You’ll have to work longer today if you do not want to have lessons on Saturday,” Sonia says. She ignores the coffee like she always does. 

Eddie drinks apple juice. Wonders if Richie is dehydrated. Plots a plan to somehow get him something to drink. Says, “I’ve been thinking about that actually.”

“You have?” she asks. “What about, dear?”

“I don’t mind doing work over the weekend,” he says. “So we don’t have to cram everything in today and I was thinking… well, you know that cake we both like from that bakery in Portland? Do you… do you think you can ask them to make one and we can have it for dessert tonight?” 

“Portland is at the least a three hour drive from here,” Sonia comments. She flips a page, doesn’t look up. “At most it’s four hours.”

Eddie pouts his lower lip, realizes she’s not looking at him and this would never work _anyway,_ and changes tactics. “Please,” he says, raising his voice just a little. “It’s my birthday.”

“That it is,” she says. “It would take all day and I haven’t prepared you for a long car ride.” 

“I could stay here,” Eddie suggests. He doesn’t know how he sounds, but he hopes she doesn’t pay enough attention to him to hear how insincere he sounds. “Work on my math. I haven’t been really grasping the algebra or whatever it is. I could also take practice SATs.” 

Sonia peers over her glasses at him. He munches on a slice of banana. Reaches over to pour this gross sugar-free syrup over a waffle. “Stay here? Alone?”

“Yeah.” She sends him a look, which makes him correct himself. “Yes,” he says. That odd feeling he got every time she did this returns to him and he remembers why. Teachers did that to him all the time in grade school. _Can I? I don’t know,_ can _you? May I?_ It was so annoying. “I’m safer here than I am anywhere else, right? You’ve always said that.” 

“You’re safe here because I am also here,” she replies. “Wherever I am is where you are safest, so if that cake is really what you want…”

“It is,” Eddie says, _but I don’t want to go with you._ “But I’m already behind enough as it is. You said so yourself. I could bring the work with me, but I won’t get anything done. Do you really want to deal with me throwing up the whole time?”

“Not really. Why don’t I just pick up a vanilla cake from the supermarket? You like those.”

Eddie grips his fork tight. “Yes, I do, but it’s my _birthday._ Shouldn’t we do something bigger than that cake we always get? Something _better?_ ”

“It’s just a birthday, Eddie.” She takes a sip of her coffee finally, probably lukewarm at best by now. She says nothing about the way he made it. “You had one last year and you’ll have another next year. They aren’t very special.” 

Yeah, he knows that, _but._

“ _Please,_ Mommy?” he asks, and he’s not proud of the way he whines, just a little bit. Or the way he moves closer, lets his sock brush against her calf, poking and prodding at her like he used to when he wanted attention when he was little. “Think of the lemons and the raspberries! We can get it with that buttercream frosting you like.”

Sonia indulges in a butter croissant— _where did she get those?_ —and gets a flurry of flaky crumbs on her robe. “If I go,” she starts off slowly, “I will stop off at my sister’s. I will call you to check up on you. I will expect your work to be done and better than the usual nonsense you submit to me. We’ll have a late supper and you will refrain from sugar for the next _month._ You know what it does to your teeth.”

Eddie’s heart grows wings and does a little flutter. “So… you’ll go?” 

“My sister has been begging me to see her.” She folds the paper in front of her. It’s positioned so Eddie only has view of the crossword. “I could do with some time away from this awful town.” _Notice how she only worries for herself._ Eddie refrains from rolling his eyes. “These papers and the news and the people are just so sad. So dreary.” She dabs her mouth with a napkin. “Don’t make me regret trusting you,” she warns, like she probably isn’t jumping at the chance to be free of him for a day.

Eddie hears a thump upstairs ( _convenient timing, Richie, Jesus_ ) and hits his knee against the table in his mad rush to get up. He holds his breath as he hugs her, arms wrapped around her shoulders and face buried in her neck. She still feels cold and clammy, slimy in a way that makes his skin crawl. He squeezes her tight regardless and kisses her lightly on the cheek. “Thank you.” 

“Thank me when you’ve proven to me you’re trustworthy,” she scolds. 

Eddie rolls his eyes where she can’t see and smiles at her. “Of course I’m trustworthy, Mommy,” he says. “Have I ever done anything to convince you otherwise?”

“No,” she answers, because of course he hasn’t. He’s had no friends for four years. Has had no reason to go against what she’s ever said, memory foggy and brain nothing but mush. He’s never done a thing wrong, never stepped a toe out of line. Hasn’t even raised his voice, or complained about chores or schoolwork, or fought against her insistence he stay inside. He may not understand anything she does and he may not agree with it, but he goes along with it. He is the world’s _best_ son. No one else can compare. “But you’re terrible at math, Eddie-bear.”

“Just this one thing!” he insists, ignoring the nickname and how it makes him feel like he’s, he doesn’t know, being buried alive or locked in a very small, very dark room. 

“Finish your breakfast,” Sonia commands, unlodging him from her side. “I’ll call the bakery and you’ll show me what you plan to work on while I’m gone. Besides the math, you do have a book to read.”

Eddie slides back into his chair, much more pleased than he was before, and sneaks a hard-boiled egg into his pocket when she gets up to use the phone. 

3

“Heads up,” Eddie calls. 

Richie doesn’t move fast enough and gets lobbed in the forehead. “Jesus _fuck,_ ” he yelps, much louder than he’d meant to. 

Eddie scrambles across the room and leaps next to him, slapping his hand over his mouth. “ _Rich._ ”

He licks his palm, which Eddie hates, and asks around it, “What’d you throw at me?”

“An egg.” Eddie wipes his hand on the front of his shirt. Richie finds it amusing since, you know, Eddie’s had his tongue down his throat twice in the past two hours. 

“An _egg?_ ”

“Yeah.” Eddie hands it to him, cracked where it hit him. “I thought you’d be hungry.”

“Wait, I’m sorry,” Richie says, pushing himself up. “You thought I was hungry so you _threw an egg at me?_ What is with you and injuring me?”

“I _warned_ you.”

“Oh, that was hardly a warning,” Richie retorts. “You gotta wait at least, like, five seconds. It’s common courtesy.” 

“Sorry.” Eddie rolls his eyes. “I’m a little rusty on social conventions. I brought you waffles and fruits.” 

He spreads out a wet napkin between them, unveiling a miniature of the breakfast he must’ve eaten downstairs, and Richie feels his stomach grumble. He tears apart a waffle and shoves it in his mouth. “What’s the plan?” 

“Chew and then talk like a human being,” Eddie instructs. “I am _this close_ to getting out of this house and I will not be deterred from it by you _choking._ ”

“I’d rather choke on—“

“Richie,” Eddie interrupts. “ _Chew and then speak._ ”

Richie makes a scene of it, grotesque noises and all, and shows off his tongue. “What’s the plan?” he asks again. 

Eddie shifts, folding his legs in front of him, and watches Richie munch on strawberries. “She’s going to Portland.” 

“For what?”

“I asked for a cake.” 

“She’s going to _Portland_ for a _cake?_ ” Richie asks. “That’s… out of character.”

“Well,” Eddie draws out, “it’s not just for a cake. She’s going to visit her sister and that always gets…” He makes a face, searching for the word. Richie scrapes a leaf out of his teeth. “Out of hand. She’ll probably be there all night, so.”

“Ooh,” Richie sing-songs. “A full day free from her devil claws! Whatcha gonna do?”

A regular teenage delinquent would say something like _throw a party,_ or _invite my significant other over,_ or _raid the liquor cabinet,_ or… or something particularly interesting. Something that breaks all the rules. But all Eddie says is, “Go to the Barrens and see my friends. Maybe get some ice cream.”

“Scandalous,” Richie says. “Downright blasphemous, Eds. I can’t believe you’d entertain such a thing!”

Eddie knees him. “Don’t be a dick,” he says, “and don’t make any jokes about yours or I won’t ask you if you want to get ice cream with me.”

“Well, I’ll be,” Richie returns grandly, fanning his face like a swooning girl from the Deep South. “Are you askin’ me out on a date, Edward?”

“Not if you keep _that_ up, whatever it is.”

Richie drops the Voice, even though he thinks it’s one of his best. This one, and his spot-on impersonation of Officer Nell. “Wait, are you serious?”

“It’s ice cream, Richie,” Eddie replies, but Richie watches the way he squints his eyes just a little bit and pulls his lower lip between his teeth. “Not the prom.”

“Seems a little more serious than being asked to the prom, not gonna lie.” 

“I don’t want to get ice cream with you anymore,” Eddie tells him. “I’ll go by myself.” 

“Nope,” Richie says. “You don’t get to do anything without me ever again. Speaking of going, when do we get to do that? It’s…” He checks his watch. “Almost ten-thirty.” 

Eddie all but grimaces, bobbing his head. “In the next half hour,” he says. “She hasn’t left yet, but she’s called her sister and the bakery so it’s only a matter of—“

Richie squeaks at Eddie’s sudden shove, tumbling over the edge of the bed and landing hard on his hip. Pain shoots up his side and bursts behind his head. “Ow,” he says, but for some reason he knows to be quiet, so it’s more of a whisper than anything else. “I am getting my _ass_ kicked today.”

Eddie throws something at him—a pillow, he finds out—and Richie shuts his mouth. The bedroom door opens. 

Richie doesn’t think he’s ever been so scared in his life, and he’s almost died on several occasions. He bends his knee, tries to wiggle underneath the bed, but the floorboards seem to creak as he does so. He holds his breath instead, and prays to every god he knows that she won’t move any closer, that she’ll stay over there, as far away as she can possibly be.

There is a pregnant, awkward pause, and then Sonia goes, “Are you talking to someone in here?”

“No,” Eddie says. “ _Who_ would I be talking to?”

“I thought I heard voices.” 

“Just the radio, I guess,” Eddie replies. 

Richie winces as Sonia’s footsteps come closer. The silence in the room has never been so apparent. So heavy. Clearly the radio is not on nor has it ever been on, and while Eddie’s been good at toeing the line with his mother she’s always been a little bit better. 

He waits with bated breath, turns his head and watches the shoes. The toes of them creep towards him and then stop. 

“The radio isn’t—“

Static cuts her off, loud and high-pitched. It grates on Richie’s ears and his brain, fills the space up so fully it almost feels like there’s no room for the rest of them. It gives way to a song Richie has never heard before, something from the fifties maybe. Swing or doo-wop. It fades in and out like the thing can’t get a good connection or the battery is dying. A voice, one that Richie sometimes hears in his head, the deep, all-knowing one, says something about the weather. A cold front. Chance of rain that turns to snow that turns to sleet. It’s gonna be a real shitty couple of days. 

Above him, Eddie says to his mom, casual as shit, “It’s been acting like that for the past week. I think I need a new one.”

“Maybe,” Sonia replies. “If you behave, I’ll consider getting you another one.”

“Okay,” Eddie says. He drops a leg, foot dangling near Richie’s knee. “Are you planning on leaving now?”

“Yes. I should get to your aunt’s a little after one if traffic allows. I will call to check in, so do not dawdle when it comes to your work. I’m trusting you to do the right thing, Eddie-bear. Don’t make me regret leaving you alone.”

“Right.” Eddie brushes his toes against Richie’s leg. “I’ve got all this stuff to do.” He whacks at whatever’s on his bed, books maybe, and Richie refrains from reaching out to grab his ankle. “I’ll be pretty busy all day.”

“Remember to practice your definitions,” she instructs. “You’re sitting for the SATs in a month’s time and you are nowhere near where you’re supposed to be for the English portion.” 

Eddie keeps quiet while she lectures him, swinging his foot back and forth almost incessantly. Richie makes a mental note to tell him the SATs aren’t as bad as she’s making them out to be, and it literally does not fucking _matter._ Unfortunately he can’t move or say anything now, so he just slowly lifts his hand and runs the pad of his finger down the underside of Eddie’s foot. Eddie spasms when he gets to the arch, knee jerking out and heel whacking against the side of the bed. Richie files his ticklishness away for later. 

The radio flickers in and out again, cycling through tidbits of songs. Richie feels uncomfortably called out as it does so. He listens to the modge podge of music, stuff he’s long since been associating with Eddie, with the feelings he had for him that he didn’t quite understand until it was too late. It creates a dizzying effect that has him missing out on the rest of Eddie’s conversation. Not like he wanted to be part of that in the first place. 

_I seek to cure what’s deep inside, frightened of this thing that I’ve become—_

_—ooh, you make me live—_

_—then you say “go slow,” and I fall behind—_

_—but of all these friends and lovers, there is no one compares with you—_

It pulls him under, makes his gut twist. He doesn’t realize it, but he holds on to Eddie’s ankle, his thumb sliding beneath the band of his sock. He applies pressure to the bone there, feels both of their pulses. It calms him significantly until the radio screeches again, calls out to him and to Eddie, who stiffens. Sonia doesn’t hear anything, still prattling on about expectations and rules probably, but that same voice comes back, the one that told Richie how to get here, that turned on the radio and talked about the weather. 

That voice says, “Grant him his Wish,” and another says, “He has not wished for anything yet,” and the first replies, “Help him.”

Richie hears himself next, hears the wish and how the wording is wrong. He knows exactly where it was misinterpreted. _To go back to a time where he was here._

And then he hears Eddie at age twelve, a memory that isn’t his. _There’s a kid outside. Looks like someone killed him._

Ben comes next, something about twenty-seven years, and _cool, huh?_ Thirteen-year-old Richie answers him: _No. No. Nothing cool._

Stan spells out Eddie’s name, followed by the beep of numbers being pressed into a phone. Richie almost expects it to ring again downstairs, but it doesn’t. He hears Stan say _Eddie! Hi! Tell me Richie is with you and not dead in a ditch._

It stops there like it’s jammed, repeating _dead in a ditch dead in a ditch dead dead dead dead_ until Richie feels it in his throat like his own heartbeat. 

Dead. 

Dead. 

_Dead._

It goes silent, eerie and uncomfortable. Richie counts each one of his breaths. The word revolves around his brain like the earth does the sun, hot and slow and painful, and he is suddenly very aware that he is hyperventilating. Dead. _Dead._

 _Barrens,_ Stan’s voice says, and then Eddie’s, and then Richie, snotty, throat closed up. _I want to go to the clubhouse._

The last thing they hear before the radio goes back to its regularly scheduled programming is something that sounds like Ben does right now, only harder. More cutting. It’s the way he sounds when he stands up to Bowers and Belch and Patrick Hockstetter. It’s strong, his voice, and it takes no shit, but there’s an undercurrent of evil there, guiding his words. _I’ve been so loooooonely... Won’t you play with me? Won’t you come over? Come play. You know where to find me._

And they do. 

He does. 

Neibolt Street. They’ll end up there eventually. He feels it in his bones.

“You really do need a new radio,” Sonia says. Richie’d almost forgotten she was there, what she sounded like. That she _existed._ He’s kind of glad she’s here, if he’s honest, but that doesn’t mean much anyway. They don’t have a good track record with her being on their side. With any adult being on their side, actually. “Or maybe you should just move it to a different place in the room.” 

Eddie blurts out “ _Wait_ ” as she goes to grab it, the thing now stuck on _play._ Play. Play. Play. Incredible how a word that meant so much when they were little—freedom, games, imagination—could be so sinister now. 

_Play._

Sonia ignores Eddie, leans over the bed, and by some miracle does not see Richie. She doesn’t even look down, just takes it from one nightstand to another. Eddie lets out a loud, haggard breath and kicks down at Richie. Richie grabs hold of his foot. 

The radio, closer to the door, hiccups once more ( _PLAY_ ) before a DJ announces _Stupid Cupid,_ and the song starts in earnest. 

“This is better than that incessant static,” Sonia says, “but I’ve always hated this song.” 

The only part of it that Richie can focus on is the first line. _You got me jumping like a crazy clown._ Does everything have to go back to the fucking clown? It’s been less than ten hours. 

“Alright, give me a kiss,” Sonia commands. “I’ll call when I get to your aunt’s.” 

“Yep.”

“You finish up this math and then—“

“—learn more SAT words. I know,” Eddie says. “I will.”

“Good. I’ll see you later, Eddie-bear. Behave.” 

“I will,” Eddie repeats. 

There is the smacking sound of a kiss, mouth to cheek, and Sonia departs. They wait, listening for the creak of the stairs, the slam of the door, and the start of the car. 

Eddie flips through his books mindlessly. Time passes, maybe five minutes, and then he moves, scrambling over the side of his bed to lay on the floor next to Richie. “Hi,” he whispers. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Richie replies. “Are you?”

“I… I guess,” Eddie says. “What _was_ that? Why didn’t my mom hear it?” 

Richie has a number of theories, but he knows deep down what that was. It was a call. A reminder that there’s more to this than Eddie. That it’s not just a reunion, but something else Richie started because he’s selfish. Because he’s _sad._ That is definitely not something he wants to explain in detail to the rest of them. He doesn’t know if he can look Bill in the face and tell him _he’s_ the reason It is back, all because _hey, yeah, guess what, I’m not straight and I’ve been in love with Eddie maybe my whole life, I don’t know, and I basically wished us back to 1989. But hey! At least we’re not thirteen._

Mm. Exciting. 

He reaches up to tuck a stray curl back into Eddie’s hair. “It wasn’t meant for her,” he says, “so she heard what she wanted to. You know how the adults are here. They see what they want to see.” 

“So it was It,” Eddie deduces. 

“I think it was the magic in general,” Richie says carefully. There’s more than that clown here. There’s the bridge and whatever that other voice is. It’s _Derry_ talking. This town has never made any sense. 

“What does it want?”

“What you want,” Richie says. _What I don’t want._ “Us to leave.” He smiles at him. “You ready?”

Eddie nods immediately, eyes twinkling, and Richie swallows back his nausea, sharp and hot rising up his throat. He wishes that Eddie would be a little bit more hesitant, a little bit more nervous, or show any sign that he’s not that gung-ho. Not that he would ever try to convince him otherwise. Whatever Eddie wants to do, Richie will make sure it happens, but it doesn’t mean he’s not incredibly apprehensive of it.

And apprehensive he is, but that doesn’t stop him from grinning, big and fake but still somehow remarkably excited, which—of course he is, he’s with Eddie. Everything with Eddie is exciting; it always has been. 

He boops his nose. “Let’s get that ice cream,” he says. “You still like vanilla?”

“Yeah,” Eddie answers, “but I think maybe I could try something different today.”

“Yeah?” Richie asks. “Like what?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie says. “Why don’t you tell me?”

Richie’s fears seem to shrink in size, and his nerves subside, and his smile grows. “I think you’d probably like Rocky Road, but we can sample all the flavors if you want.”

“You think we have time for that?”

“For you?” Richie asks. “I’ll make sure of it.”

4

Eddie sucks his cheeks into his mouth and clips his fanny pack to his waist with shaky hands, ignoring the way Richie stares at him as he does. He has no real desire to wear it, but it feels… it feels right. Important. Like he may need it for something. But for what? It’s full of random collections of medical products he’s used at some point and— 

“Holy shit, are these yours?” He holds out a pair of the ugliest glasses he’s ever seen, complete with magnifying lenses. 

Richie makes a choking sound before he laughs and holds his hand out for them. “I was wondering what happened to these!”

“Were you?” Eddie asks with a twist of his mouth. “They’re hideous.”

“I mean, several years ago when I thought I lost them, I was wondering what happened,” Richie says. “My dad never liked getting me new glasses because I was always breaking them.” _Bowers was always breaking them._ “And don’t talk about them like you _didn’t_ have a crush on me when I exclusively wore these.”

“I did not have a crush on you when—“

Richie cuts him off with an exaggerated clearing of his throat. 

Eddie rolls his eyes, zips the pack back up, and starts to shove his arms into the winter coat he has hidden away in the back of his closet. “I liked them because they made your eyes really big,” he says into the collar, avoiding looking at him, you know, for that exact reason. “I always thought they were really pretty.”

He flicks his gaze up for just a second, sees the way Richie’s mouth softens, and avoids that completely, even if it makes his stomach do somersaults. He wonders how long it’ll do that for, react to him like this. He wonders how long it _did_ that for before he forgot about it. 

_The whole time,_ a voice tells him. The voice from the radio. Something tells him it isn’t wrong. 

“You ready yet?” Richie asks, leaning up against the doorframe. He swings Eddie’s baseball bat from one hand to the other, hits it against the knob of the open front door. Eddie has a perfect view of his street, empty and silent. The house across from him has a swing on their porch. The branches of the bare trees shake with a gust of wind. “You look like you’re about to hike the Appalachians.” 

“Shut up. We’re going to need all of these things.”

“I get why we’d need Tylenol but I don’t think the situation calls for your SAT prep book.”

“My mom literally said—“

“—you think she’s going to call and ask you to tell her the definition of sanguine?” Richie asks. “You’re not even going to be home when she calls.” 

That thought should scare him, blatantly going against his mother’s instructions, especially when it was almost too easy for her to agree to leave him behind. Should make him pause. Reconsider. It doesn’t, though. It’s hardly on his radar. “That won’t be a problem,” he tells Richie. “And I don’t need this book to tell me the definition of sanguine.”

“Oh yeah? What is it?”

“Positive in a bad or difficult situation,” Eddie retorts easily, “which is what we should be right now. Let’s go. Lead the way, Frodo.”

Richie’s mouth twitches. “No.”

“You _said—_ “

“I know what I said, dude, but you’re not wearing shoes and I don’t wanna hear about your frozen toes.” 

Eddie opens his mouth, snaps it shut, and looks down at his feet. Yep. Just his socks. “Right,” he says. “Please hold.”

He traipses back upstairs, into the closet, and pulls out—he guesses sneakers will have to do? He doesn’t even remember the last time he had to wear these. He puts them on, checks to see where his big toe is, and stands. It’s a tight fit but not really; it’s probably only like that because he’s only ever barefoot or in socks or slippers. It’s fine. If he breaks his toes, whatever, right? They’ll heal, or so he’s heard. 

“Okay, now I’m ready,” he says to Richie, coming to a stop in front of him. He looks ridiculous in his destroyed jacket but that’s really nothing new.

“After you.” Richie gestures with a wonky little half-bow. 

“Why after me?”

“I’m not the one who’s been stuck in their house for four years,” Richie replies, “and I’d much rather stare at your butt, if I’m honest.” 

Eddie shoves his shoulder. “You can’t even see it.”

“Yeah, but I know it’s there.” Richie slaps his back. “Come on. Time’s a-wastin’, big boy.”

“Ew, never call me that again,” Eddie complains. He shoves his hands in his pockets and almost dawdles a bit, putting his foot outside and then back inside. Out. In. Out. In. Over and over he does this until finally he takes a deep breath and walks out of the house. 

No sirens sound. No alarms blare. Eddie stands on his porch, a few feet away from complete and total freedom, and feels his stomach start to turn. He squeezes his thumb, shuffles closer to the steps, and hears the front door slam shut. It’s a definitive sort of sound, louder than necessary and echoing through Eddie’s entire body. It feels like every door in the house has also closed with it, that every window is now locked shut. 

Richie lets out a startled yelp, tripping forward. He’s gripping the fingers of his bad arm when Eddie turns back. He’s holding them so tightly Eddie can see them turning red. “That wasn’t me,” he says almost defensively, but Eddie believes him. He doesn’t need to say anything for that to be true.

Eddie’s mouth moves but he has no idea what he’s going to say. “We can’t go back in until it’s over.” That feels true, too, though it is not anywhere in Eddie’s consciousness. He just knows. Somehow. 

“I had a feeling,” Richie says, “when the door tried to break my fucking fingers.” 

Eddie winces. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” Richie answers, though he casts an annoyed glance behind him. “What about you?”

Eddie balances his weight from one foot to another. His eyes move from Richie to the street, heart beating hard against his ribcage and loud in his ears. “Perfect,” he says though he feels anything but. He presses down on his toes, rocks back on his heels, pushes himself up and then down again. It’s a result of the nervous energy coursing through him, the thought of going past these porch steps, down the path to the sidewalk, and farther still. He finds if he moves his body like this he doesn’t feel his hands shake. 

Richie sidles up to him, extending the hand he almost lost to the door. “I’m taking you the long way to the Barrens,” he tells him. He either ignores Eddie’s apprehensiveness or doesn’t notice it. Either way, Eddie is grateful. 

It takes him a second to take the hand, inhaling slow and exhaling even slower, but he slides his fingers between his eventually. He feels the weight drop from his shoulders, feels warm and safe and like… like he can take on the world, or something similar to it, just because of this. Of Richie’s hand in his. Richie squeezes him, rubs a thumb along Eddie’s index finger, and leads the way, just one step ahead each time. Their arms swing between them, a deliberate motion maybe, but the force of it keeps Eddie moving forward. He follows as best he can, trying not to make it obvious he’s being all but dragged along, and plays a game he remembers from when he was little. He makes sure to keep himself from stepping on cracks, counting the number of steps he takes in each sidewalk square. Some of them are bigger than others. 

He realizes after a while that Richie is copying him. They must look like idiots, holding hands like they’re five, hopping from square to square. It doesn’t seem to matter, not until they get to the corner and Eddie looks over his shoulder only to find he’s unable to see his house. It’s like it’s disappeared. Like it’s not there, or never has been. 

Eddie bites down on his cheek. Pain bursts on the left side of his face, which he welcomes gratefully. It reminds him that he is real. That he is here. On the flip side, that means the house disappearing is real, too. 

“Richie,” he says, tugging on his arm. “Can you still see my house?” 

Richie looks at him, then behind him, and Eddie bites down harder. He has to ignore the way his body tells him to stop, to let go, that he’s _hurting_ himself.

“Logically I _know_ where it should be,” Richie answers slowly, “but… it’s not there.” 

Eddie only lets go of his cheek when he tastes the tang of blood. He prods at the wound he made with his tongue. “This was a bad idea.” 

“I’m sure it has something to do with the whole, uh, not being able to go back thing,” Richie says. 

“And that makes _sense?_ Richie, my house is _gone._ ” 

“Probably for the best. You were locked in there for years.” 

“You think it’s for—I can’t find my _house,_ Richie. Where am I supposed to go? What does it—we should go back.” 

“To what?” Richie asks. “There’s… Eds, there’s nothing _there._ ”

Eddie pulls his hand away from him and takes a step forward, and another, and another until he’s pacing back and forth. “I should never have… I should’ve just made you leave and stayed where I was. My mom was right, I am a terrible son, and now I _am_ in danger, it’s not safe here and I have nowhere to go, I erased it and—” 

“It’s not… she’s not _right,_ Eds.” 

“That’s _not_ my name!”

“It’s what I call you, Edd _ie,_ and you know that,” Richie says. “You give me shit for it but you don’t actually fucking mind. I’m not going to—I’m not going to entertain this breakdown when she’s always been wrong. So we can’t find your house? Good _fucking_ riddance, am I right? That place is terrifying, and you were kept in there for what? So your mom could fucking watch you? Keep you from fun, and your friends, and people who loved you? From _me_?” His voice cracks, which stops Eddie’s pacing. He has one foot in the air, and that’s where it stays, his gaze stuck on Richie like he’s the only thing he can see. Like he’s the only thing in the world. “Sorry if I don’t want it to show up again. Sorry that I’m glad it’s gone. Means you have the chance to _live._ Means I get to keep…” 

Eddie’s mouth parts almost audibly; he licks his lips before he says anything, feeling practically—feeling frozen under the intensity of Richie’s stare. He’s babbling like an idiot, word vomiting up his feelings, word vomiting up the _truth,_ if Eddie is honest, if he lets himself out of the cage of his mind, constructed and enforced by his mother’s careful, manipulative hands. Everything he says is right. Everything he says is the truth, and all Eddie can focus on right now is the look in his eyes. 

“That house is the _least safe_ place in this fucking town,” Richie continues. “You’re safer, I dunno, literally _anywhere else,_ so I can’t believe she’s managed to convince you otherwise. We are… we are safer when we’re together and it doesn’t matter where that is. Here, on this street corner, or down the block, or at the bridge, or… or… in the middle of the fucking _street._ That house—that’s the _last_ place you want to be.”

“What were you saying?” 

Richie blinks, one hand extended in a gesticulation Eddie can’t determine. “That this house is the worst and we should be glad it’s gone.” 

“No,” Eddie replies. “I heard that. Loud and clear. Before all that… with the… you said you get to _keep_ , but never finished. What do you get to keep?”

“Oh.” Richie fiddles with his glasses, but only results in making them crooked. “I… you,” he says softly. “I get to keep you.” He clears his throat. “And before you say anything, I know that you’re not an object or anything that can be owned.”

Eddie moves closer, the heat of his fear and his insecurities dimming to nothing but a low simmer, hardly even a flicker. “You get to keep me,” he tells him. “That’s true, but you’ve always had me, I think. I’m yours. I’ve always—nothing can keep us apart anymore. Now that I _really_ remember it.” 

“All this stuff you’re saying, Eds,” Richie blurts. “I don’t know what to make of it. I don’t want to feel like I forced you out of there, like I’m making you do something. I wanted… I wanted to see you so badly, I missed you so much, and I wished for you. I wished for… for all of this. For every single thing that’s happened and is going to happen. And I just need to know that this isn’t part of it. That you going along with me isn’t because _I_ want it, but because _you_ do.” 

“There’s a lot of things that I don’t understand right now,” Eddie tells him honestly, “but you are not one of them.”

“I’m not?”

“No,” Eddie answers. “How can you be? I _hallucinate_ you. I read your notes from seventh grade obsessively. I’ve been listening to your mixtape for years. Whenever I’m sad, or scared, or fucking tripping because my mom gives me medicine to, like, subdue me when she tires of me, you’re always there. I’ve never really forgotten you. Of course I want to go with you. I’d always go anywhere with you.”

Richie stares at him, breathing shakily. 

“I’m just… I’m kind of scared,” Eddie admits. “I haven’t been anywhere further than that house without my mom in years. The last time… the last time there was the clown and I broke my arm and I was kind of scared just like this. Only worse.” He reaches out to straighten Richie’s glasses and lets his hand stay there, lets himself touch. “I know she did it all the wrong way, but she was only trying to protect me, and I just stopped listening to her. I convinced her to go somewhere else for something for me and now our house is gone and I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again or what will happen if I _do._ And it’s just… nothing bad has ever happened to me in there.”

“Nothing’s _ever_ happened to you. Not there, not anywhere,” Richie replies quietly. “Don’t you want things to? Don’t you want to be out here?”

“Of course,” Eddie says immediately. “It’s just… so much could go wrong out here, and she always said I was safer at home, or with her, and now… I _want_ to, I really do or else I wouldn’t have gotten this far, but what if she’s right? What if it is safer inside? What if she is the only one who can protect me?” He pulls his hand away from Richie’s cheek, balls it into a fist, and sighs. “And I can’t even change my mind. I can’t go back. There’s nothing there.” 

Richie pulls Eddie’s fist apart, slow and careful, smoothing each finger out like it’s a wrinkle on a bedsheet. “She’s not,” he tells him. “She’s not the only person who can protect you. _You_ can. I’ve seen it. You just need to believe in yourself, Eddie.” 

Eddie nods, wrapping his arms around Richie’s waist and hugging him. Richie is slow to return it, the baseball bat digging into Eddie’s back. He palms the nape of his neck and presses his nose to his hair. “Okay,” Eddie says. “It doesn’t matter that it’s gone. What matters is that I’m with you.”

“No.” Richie pulls away. “What matters is that you’re you, and you’re brave, and you’re strong, and you can protect yourself probably better than anyone else can.” He smiles a little. “I’m scared too,” he tells him. “We can be scared together.”

“I don’t want to be scared,” Eddie says. “I’m always scared.”

“Then we won’t be. We’ll just be two guys on the way to the ice cream parlor to sample every single flavor they have.” 

“Is that why we’re taking the long way?”

“Yeah,” Richie says. “You think I was going to take you straight to the Barrens shitshow? We have to have _some_ fun at least.”

Eddie nods, smoothing down the ripped fabric of Richie’s coat. It’s not even a winter one, just something light. Most likely not that warm. It’ll probably be cold at the Barrens, wherever they end up going there. The quarry, probably, and it’s always chilly by the water. “Think they’ll hate that?” 

“Probably happens to them all the time,” Richie says. “A buncha snotty kids who claim they’re going to buy something but they just want to try the newest sherbet before they decide but never really get anything? We’ll have to make a convincing argument for you.”

“You sound like you have a personal history with this sort of thing.” 

“Stan works there,” Richie explains. “I get to hear all about it, but I also know what’s good and what’s not. What’s new. There’s this fudge brownie thing I want to try. I think there’s, like, an actual brownie in it.”

“Sounds like a cavity waiting to happen.”

“Nuh-uh,” Richie says. “Nope. No talk like that from you. Erase what your mom ever told you about sugar. Your mouth will thank you for it.”

“Well, if you put it that way…” Eddie trails off cheekily, smiling up at him. The wind picks up around them, makes Richie shiver. Eddie revels in it, the feel of it against his skin. “You seem to know what my mouth will like.”

“Figuring out your likes and dislikes is essentially my job,” Richie quips. He grins at him. Presses his mouth together. His eyes twinkle. He dimples down at him, cheeks perfectly pink. Begging to be touched. 

“Does it pay well?”

“Sometimes,” Richie replies. “You good to get a move on?”

Eddie looks behind him once more. The street is quiet. Picturesque, almost, like it’s come straight out of the pamphlet for Pleasantville, USA. He’s surprised there aren’t any people running down the block. The hedges are cut into perfect squares and all the paint jobs are exactly the same. He still can’t find his house, but he feels less like it’s a bad thing. Less like the hole in his stomach is growing, filling him up with anxiety. Fear. 

“Yeah,” he says. Maybe all he needs is to get away from this street. Maybe he’ll feel better then. “Hold my hand?”

Richie flits their fingers together, squeezes twice, and gestures for Eddie to start walking. “Of course.” 

Eddie follows a pull as he walks down and away from his house, following directions that seem to be ingrained within him. Behind them, where the Kaspbrak residence should be, a red balloon hovers. 

Floats.

Pops.

5

The rest of the walk is endlessly amusing—or at least Richie thinks so. 

He watches Eddie marvel at the tiniest, most unimportant things. He collects fallen leaves, then drops them after analyzing them. He follows a squirrel as it races past, makes eye contact with it that honestly makes Richie a bit nervous ( _squirrels are fucking wild, man, who knows what they’ll do?_ ). He pets a cat, lean and long and black with whiskers that tickle him. He sneezes a lot; apparently one of the things his mother _wasn’t_ lying about was his allergies, which he has many of.

He also does not have any allergy medicine in his fanny pack, just a pack of tissues he races through, stuffing into the pockets of his coat.

None of this bothers him. Stops him. Not even the worries he’d had before. It’s almost like the further away they get from that house of his, the easier it is for him to relax. To enjoy this. 

And enjoy it he is. He’s got this cute little bounce in his step, and it reminds Richie of when they were little, escaping from school or their houses to play games. They used to play, like, Cops and Robbers. Richie and Eddie were always on opposite teams so they could “capture” each other or whatever. It was just a reason for Richie to tackle him, which made Eddie laugh, and Richie thought Eddie’s laugh was, like, one of the top ten greatest things he’s ever heard, after Wham!’s _Wake Me Up Before You Go Go_ and the entirety of the _Star Wars_ soundtrack.

He follows after him, feeling lighter than he has in years, humming along to it ( _you put the boom boom into my heart, you send my soul sky high when your lovin’ starts_ ), and is shocked out of his reverie when Eddie’s fingers touch his ear.

“For you,” Eddie says.

“For me,” Richie says dumbly. “What is it?”

Eddie holds up a bunch of—Richie thinks they’re chrysanthemums—and wrinkles his nose, like he’s holding off another sneeze. “A flower. I think they’re pretty.”

“So you gave me one?”

“I think you’re pretty too,” Eddie says. “Fair is fair.”

Richie takes the rest of them from him, rips them of their stems, and carefully puts them in his pocket. “It’s a shame this didn’t happen to you in the spring. I think you would really like it.”

“I think I’d be a lot more snotty,” Eddie admits, “but I like fall. So crisp. Clean, kind of. Full of possibility.”

“All this fresh air is getting to your head, Eds. It’s just fall. Practically winter.”

Eddie snorts, spinning on his heel, and leads them closer to town. Richie can hear the roar of Main Street, the rush of water as the Kenduskeag moves below. They are about to hit the top of the hill overlooking the shops, the square, and the… and the bridge. Richie’s entire body seems to tingle just thinking about it.

“Let me be a little excited,” Eddie retorts. “There’s so _much_ out here! So much to _do,_ like we could go to… to the _park,_ or something, and so much to _see,_ like look at that bird! What kind of bird is that?”

Richie follows his finger, but all he sees is the dark shadow of some unnamable thing. “I don’t know,” he says. “I’m not the bird guy. You’ll have to ask Stan.”

“That’s _right,_ ” Eddie says, voice on the brink of amazed remembrance. “He was always carrying around that book. He did that with his dad. We had to stop all the time when he saw one and…” He stops as if struck by a thought. “He saved us once. Because he knew all about birds.”

“Yup,” Richie replies. A cloud passes overhead, dimming the startlingly strong rays of the sun. For one brief, insane moment, he thinks it’s that large monstrosity with the pom poms that attacked them all. Stan had yelled the scientific name of birds at it. “Still does. Loves those birds.” 

The sun reappears. Richie feels his shoulders slump, losing the tension he wasn’t aware he felt. He swallows, shakes himself out, and thinks, _This is supposed to be fun for us. The bad stuff comes after. Get out of your fucking head._

He isn’t sure who he’s talking to as the thought comes to him. Himself? One of the many voices that has taken up residency in his brain? 

Regardless he pleads to himself, to them. _Please let him have this. Just an hour. Two, tops. Please. You’ve granted my wish before._

It grows hotter where he stands, making him unzip his coat at the throat, and a wind, warmer than the month calls for, hits him square in the face. _Two hours,_ that force says. _Use it wisely._

“Thank you,” Richie says. 

Eddie looks at him over his shoulder, brows furrowed. His lower lip looks particularly plush. “For what?”

“For reminding me Stan is a whole nerd for birds,” Richie says easily. “I can’t wait to make fun of him. Call him, like, a… cockatiels are birds, right? Stanatiel. I don’t know.”

Eddie’s face scrunches up in distaste. “Please come up with something better. From what I remember of Stan, he will not even particularly like that. He’ll eat you alive. That’s not funny.”

“You’re right,” Richie says. “I don’t know any other bird names off the top of my head—“

“—owl, eagle, hawk, parakeet, swallow,” Eddie rattles off. “Finch, toucan, woodpecker, hummingb—“

“—and none of them are funny enough anyway—“

“—tou _Stan_ —“

“—so Stanley Urine will have to do for now,” Richie finishes with a flourish, even if touStan is pretty funny. Tickles him in a way that can’t be explained. “I never asked. Do you remember much of anyone? Or is it just me?” 

Eddie pauses, lips parted like he was in the middle of saying something else. He shuts them, teeth pressing together in a way Richie can see on his face, his jaw tense. “I remember some. I remember Bev helped us with Ben, who we met at the sewer entrance, and I remember the rock fight with Mike, and the… the clown, at the house, when I was alone. I dropped my—“ He cuts himself off, looking straight at Richie, straight _through_ him, and then away. “I remember this hill and being on the back of Bill’s bike and thinking I was going to die if he didn’t slow down and he never did, even if there was so much traffic down there.” He points towards the intersection, busy and scary, four corners and numerous ways to get splattered if you’re twelve and on the back of a bike that’s too big for Bill Denbrough, who pretends it isn’t. “I remember Stan is your best friend and in middle school I was always jealous of him. Which way is the ice cream shop?” 

“Um. We go down the rest of the way and turn left at the movie theatre—did you say you were _jealous_ of _Stan?_ ”

“Yes.” Eddie heads down, almost running due to the slope of the decline, and Richie has to speed up to match his stride. He grabs his elbow, stopping him, and is very aware of the way he’s pitching sideways. 

“Why would you be jealous of Stan?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie says. “I was twelve. I didn’t know much of anything back then, let alone my own feelings. I was hardly allowed to have my own.” 

“But you did,” Richie tells him. “You had so many of your own. You hated carrots, and you always drenched your waffles in syrup, and you listened to music you liked, not what everyone else did. You didn’t like going to that one church, and you were friends with Mike and Bev, which I’m sure your mom didn’t like, and… and… and you liked me, even after all the shit she said.” He licks his lips, staring down at Eddie, who has his gaze firmly on his chin. “Why were you jealous of Stan?” 

Eddie shrugs. “I don’t… you guys were always so close, I guess, and you were always together, and at, like, one point you were attached at the hip, like you spent every waking moment together, and… and I _liked_ you, even after all the shit my mom said.” 

“I snuck notes in your locker because I couldn’t stand us being apart for longer than two hours,” Richie replies. “I made you _mixed tapes_ like all the fucking time, and we napped in that hammock together, and I literally would never leave you alone. You didn’t have to be jealous of Stan. Stan and I didn’t do the same things we did.” 

“Yeah, but… you didn’t have to watch the two of you,” Eddie says, squinting. He brushes the hair at his forehead, pulls it back. “It was always… and I was… okay, I was _twelve,_ and I didn’t know shit and I don’t know shit now, but having to go through that, after everything my mom said…” ( _HIV, AIDS, New York, epidemic, disease, disease, DISEASE_ ) “having to… what is it that they… having to question everything that I thought was…” ( _straight, liked girls, had never looked at a girl twice, not even Bev, always looking at—_ ) “while my mom was saying that people like that were…” ( _dirty, bad, dying, dead_ ) “and then having to watch you and Stan…” ( _hang out, talk very close, laugh at jokes only they knew, lay on top of each other, hold hands_ )

“Eddie.” Richie cups his cheeks, bat held between his knees. He is warm to the touch. Richie lifts his face up. “I _wished_ for you. I carved our initials into that bridge.” He jerks his head back in its general direction. “When you were doing that, I was probably whining to Stan about you. He was… he is my best friend. I tell him everything. He knows every feeling I’ve ever had and he still—he doesn’t judge me. He just listens. He’s… twelve-year-old you had nothing to worry about. I wish you had known that. I wish I hadn’t been so afraid to tell you.”

“I wish I had known a lot when I was twelve,” Eddie mumbles.

“No one knows much of anything when they’re twelve,” Richie says. “Or when they’re seventeen. Or when they’re forty, I bet. But you can start making up for it now.” 

“How?”

“By coming with me.” Richie pulls one of those flowers out of his pocket and is immensely pleased when it’s a yellow one with a bit of the stem still attached. He puts it behind Eddie’s ear. He doesn’t bother thinking about what they look like, or what other people will think when they see them. He thinks instead about how pretty Eddie looks in all these colors, soft and cuddly. “We’ll go for ice cream first and then we’ll have to stop at the pharmacy because you won’t stop sneezing and then we can… any places you want to go? It’s your day.”

Eddie pushes himself up on his tiptoes and scans the view. “I don’t,” he starts. “I don’t really have any lasting memories of any of these places. I remember the square, I think? But I don’t… it doesn’t matter. What are your favorite places?”

“I don’t have many.” _Or any._ “They all got ruined for me.”

Something flickers in Eddie’s gaze, awareness maybe, and he clears his throat. “Any places you wish you could go back to?”

Richie looks away from him, zeroing in on a bold-lettered, neon sign like he’s some kind of magnet that’s attracted to it. _ARCADE,_ it says. The _C_ blinks in and out. Faulty wiring, probably. Richie stares at it, keeps staring at it, and just… he feels _sad._ He loved going there. They all loved going there, splitting up into teams and combining all their tickets together, or just playing. Being _kids,_ especially in that small strip of time that one summer when they were anything but. Too old for their own good. Too old too fast. 

He remembers Eddie on that last day of school, making fun of him. _You gonna spend all summer at the arcade?_ Yeah. Yeah, he should’ve. Should’ve taken Eddie, locked him in there with him and played every game until they were sick and tired of them, not emerging until September rolled back around and they had to go back to school. 

“I miss playing Street Fighter,” he finds himself saying. It’s a surprise to find out that he’s being completely honest. The games he has now don’t quite cut it, not the way Street Fighter did. 

“I was never any good at it,” Eddie says. 

_I know,_ Richie thinks. The one and only time he didn’t have to worry about touching was when he was trying to explain to him how to do those special attacks. 

“Wanna teach me?” 

There should be hesitation on Richie’s part. He’d been so transparently _seen_ that day in the summer, just wanting _someone_ to stay with him, to play with him, and he’d turned tail and fled, never returning to the one and only place he’d legitimately liked. There should be some sort of apprehension, some kind of resistance to the idea, but all Richie sees is Eddie, eager and excited, and none of it matters. Nothing matters, really. 

“I’m a little rusty,” he admits.

“Doubtful,” Eddie says. “It’ll probably be like riding a bike for you. I’m the one who doesn’t know how to play it. Even before all of this I couldn’t.” 

“Alright, good sir,” Richie says grandly. His voice sounds like a mixture of accents, like he couldn’t pick just one. He clears his throat. “Ice cream, pharmacy, arcade. Hand, please. Don’t want to lose you down there. You’re so teeny.” 

Eddie rolls his eyes but lets him take it, biting his lower lip between his teeth. Richie has no idea how this makes him feel, but he starts the rest of the walk down, pointing out random places with the handle of the baseball bat. He’s holding it wrong. Down that street, Bill crashed his bike into a tree, and here is a different tree Stan climbed to see a bird and then fell out of, spraining his elbow. That’s the street corner where Bowers stole Richie’s glasses and Patrick Hockstetter broke them in half and Belch punched him in the face. Ben likes to read in this park after school, and there’s the field where they watch Stan and Mike when they play their ridiculous team sports, and over there in that grouping of trees is a place Bev and Richie go to get high sometimes. Bev works at this thrift store, and Ben volunteers at the library, and Mike still has to work at the farm on weekends and in the mornings. 

Before they know it, Eddie is pressing, pressing, _pressing_ on the button for the crosswalk and the hustle and bustle of the main part of town is upon them. Richie isn’t sure if he should be scanning for anyone his parents know, isn’t sure if they’d even care much if he wasn’t in class—he gets good grades and got his act together (mainly because he was sad) so they kind of leave him alone on that front now. He has never realized how busy this place can get at this time of day; he and Eddie have to side-step not one, not two, but _three_ groups of little kids running around. 

Eddie sneezes.

And he sneezes.

And he sneezes. 

“Detour,” Richie decides. “Pharmacy first.” 

“Yeah,” Eddie grumbles, wiping his nose on a tissue. “I thought seasonal allergies only happened in the springtime.”

Richie shrugs, heading towards Mr. Keene’s. “You’ve been in a house for four years. Maybe your little nose isn’t used to real life.” 

“I’ll sneeze on you,” Eddie threatens. 

“Please give me your Eddie germs,” Richie replies. “I will covet them.” 

“You make me nauseous.” 

“I believe they call that feeling butterflies,” Richie returns, pushing open the door. The bell jingles overhead. 

“Oh,” Eddie says. He stands in the doorway, eyes wide. His hand is clammy, almost sweaty, in Richie’s. “I’ve just—I don’t like it here.” He tugs away from Richie, wipes his palm on his pants. His gaze is unwavering on the counter in the back, visible from one of the aisles. He looks panicked, almost. Green, like he’s going to be sick. “I’m going… can I—I’m gonna wait outside, okay?”

Richie’s stomach drops to his feet so quickly and so violently he looks down to make sure he still has one. “I don’t know if—” 

“Richie,” Eddie pleads. “I can’t… I don’t… I _can’t_ be here. I feel like I’m—I feel like—I feel so _small_ here, Richie, please. I’ll just be right there.”

“Where?” 

“There’s a bench.” Eddie points across the street. It’s surprisingly vacant in a warm patch of sunlight. An ideal place to sit, which makes it curious that no one is currently occupying it. “I’ll wait for you there. I can’t be here. It’s… it reminds me of—” 

“You don’t have to tell me,” Richie cuts in. “You don’t have to explain to me why you don’t… I’m being ridiculous. Go. Take this.” He hands over the bat. “Beat up anyone who looks at you funny.”

Eddie smiles at him, a tiny thing. “It’s okay to be nervous.”

“I’m not _nerv—_ ”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Eddie reassures him. “Not without you.” 

Richie blinks. Nods. He jerks his head, sends his glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose. He pushes them back up and balls his hand into a fist when he realizes his finger is trembling. 

“Get more tissues,” Eddie requests, backing out of the store. The bell jingles again. Richie watches him check both ways ( _twice!_ ) before he crosses the street. Watches him plop down on the bench. Watches him notice him staring and wave at him. 

Richie waves back. 

Juts his thumb behind him. 

Turns away.

He pivots back, just a little, to make sure Eddie is still there. Still there and not, like, a mirage. He is. 

Then he swallows, shakes all the negative, worrisome thoughts from his head, and heads to the left, where he knows the medications are. There’s almost no one in here right now, which he is glad for—in and out—but it only makes him much more aware of all the noise he’s making. He has never once noticed how _loud_ his footsteps are. Does he know how to tread quietly? Jesus Christ, how does he ever manage to sneak out of his house? 

Richie sniffs, ducks down the correct aisle, and peruses the myriad of boxes in front of him. He takes one down, reads the back, has no idea what it means, and shoves it back in place. He repeats this over and over again until he just gives up, picking up some generic non-drowsy shit he hopes will work. All allergy medicine is the same, right? 

Sure. Yeah. It’ll do the trick, he decides. 

He finds a three-pack of tissues, grabs those, and deliberates between Twix bars and Reese’s Cups. He ends up being unable to choose, so he gets them both, and when he gets up to pay, he comes face to face with—

“What are you doing here, loser?” A snap of pink gum. “Shouldn’t you be in school?” 

Richie stares blankly at Greta’s face. He blinks, then again, and again. “I could say the same to you.” 

“School is hard for me,” she says snottily. “I am on a leave of absence.” 

“School is hard for you but this pharmacy isn’t?” 

“Sally never stepped foot in this dumbass store,” Greta answers. Richie is surprised she’s even bothering speaking to him. Most days she rings him up and throws his purchases at him. Without a bag. In the face. “It’s the only place that’s easy to be in, so I don’t go to school and I work eight hour shifts here. Don’t look at me like that, freak. I don’t want your pity.” 

“I’m not…” Richie looks away, her gaze remarkably unsettling, and swallows. He doesn’t like how relatable she is in this moment, how she reminds him of himself, ignoring the Barrens and the quarry, taking the long way around school so he could avoid the hallway that housed Eddie’s locker. Someone else uses it now, he thinks. He’s always late to class because of it. “I don’t _pity_ you. I would never waste time or energy on you like that. I just—I understand, is all.” 

“You…” Greta hands him back his change. A quarter drops to the counter. Richie scrambles to grab it, shoving the coins in his pocket. “Eddie,” she says on the breath of a sigh. 

All the hairs on the back of Richie’s neck stand up. “Eddie?” He holds his hand out for the plastic bag.

Greta loops her fingers through the handles and smiles at him, a facsimile of the mocking smirk she used to consistently wear. It just looks sad now. Richie hates that he thought that, but not as much as he hates what she just said. “Eddie?” 

“Yeah. Eddie… K-something. He always used to come here for, like, a shitton of prescriptions. Most of them were fake, which I never understood, and I was going to tell him but he never came back.” She tilts her head. Pops her gum. “He was your best friend. You’ve been a miserable little shit since. What happened to him?” 

“I—nothing happened to him,” Richie answers. He’s itchy. Very itchy. He scratches his elbow. “He—moved. How do you remember him?” 

“I just said,” Greta snaps. “He used to come in here everyday for years. He was a pathetic little boy who did everything his mother said.” 

“He wasn’t—”

She smiles, leaning forward, elbows on the counter. Her thin golden bangles make a loud jangling sound as they fall down the length of her arm. “Weren’t you, like, in _love_ with him?” 

“Was I—” Richie’s mouth goes dry. His throat all but closes. His heart pounds hard in his chest. This fear… he’d forgotten what it’d felt like, worrying about being found out. No one’s looked at him, or even bothered him, in so long that he momentarily thought he was in the clear, but one mean, popular girl shows up and it’s like he’s thirteen years old all over again. “Why would you… did you say his medications were _fake?_ ”

Her smile widens, sleek and shiny and _mean._ He can see the pink of her gum. Can smell it, too. Bubble Yum. “Yeah,” she says. “Placebos. All of ‘em, except for, like, two, but I don’t know which.” 

“All of them? Placebos?” 

“Yeah. All of them. Placebos. _Fake._ ” 

“So he didn’t _need_ them?” 

“No.” She blows a bubble, pops it, and grins again. “Never understood it. Never understood why he took ‘em all anyway, just listened to his mom and did whatever she said. No real personality, just whatever his mom made him out to be that day. Pathetic, remember?” 

A wave of pulsing hot anger crashes over him, tinting everything in the vicinity with a sheer sheen of red. He counts backwards from ten, slow and deliberate, and clenches his fists, not eager to get in trouble for punching Greta Bowie in the fucking face.

Not like he _could._ He’s never truly mastered the art of punching. 

“He’s not _pathetic,_ ” he grinds out. 

“So you _were_ in love with him.” 

“And you were in love with Sally,” Richie snaps, “but she’s probably dead in the fucking sewer, so you’re shit of luck. At least Eddie is _alive._ ” 

Greta giggles. “For now. Clock’s ticking, Trashmouth.” 

There’s a roaring in his ears, loud and all-encompassing. It makes his head hurt, throbbing behind his eyes. His voice, which he hardly hears, is low. Calm, despite the fury of emotions swirling his belly. “What’d you say?” 

“I _said,_ ” Greta snaps, “don’t look at me like that, _freak._ Take your shit and go.” 

Richie snatches the bag out of her hands. Her fingers are ice cold, sending a jolt of unpleasantness up his arm and down his spine. “Go to hell, Greta.” 

“I’ll see you there,” she says. He watches her blow another bubble, pop it, and chomp on it in the most unappealing way possible. “ _Bye._ ”

“Yeah, bye, whatever,” Richie mumbles, turning on his heel. He stomps through the store, shoves open the door, and has a minor, _very_ minor, heart attack when he doesn’t see Eddie on the bench. That roaring returns, along with an acute nausea that makes him—pinch the bridge of his nose? Does that help? Should he hang his head upside down? How do you _deal_ with—

But then he spots him, peering into the glass of the old record shop, and it all dissipates. 

Jesus _fucking_ Christ. 

Richie jogs across the street without looking and flips off a guy who narrowly avoids running him over. He honks, his hand on the horn for an unnecessary amount of time. What an asshole. 

“How much for that Eddie in the window?” he calls, guarding his eyes from the sun. It’s bright, yellow, searing, and strong. Eddie fucking glows in it. Of course he gets to have the perfect goddamn day in the middle of a Maine November. What a little shit. 

Eddie doesn’t turn his head, still gazing at… record players? Vinyls? The Nirvana poster? “How much you got?” 

Richie checks the coins in his pockets (forty-two cents) and flips open his wallet. “Uh,” he starts, counting the bills, “thirty-three... And the emergency credit card my dad gave me. There’s, like, three hundred on there, so three hundred and thirty-three dollars and forty-two cents.” 

“I’m afraid I cost more than that,” Eddie tells him. Richie sees his pout in the window. 

“Can I sway you with my purchases?” Richie asks. “I’ve got drugs!” 

“Ooh, yeah, you got me there,” Eddie replies, facing him. “Hand them over. I want to breathe out of my left nostril.” 

“So pushy,” Richie says. He tosses the box at him, then rifles through the seemingly endless bag for the tissues. “Here. Blow.” 

Eddie shoves his hand in his face. “Don’t look at me when I do this. It’s gross.”

“Oh god, blowing your nose is _gross?_ Can’t believe you don’t make anything seem so cute!” 

“Shut up,” Eddie grumbles, voice muffled. He turns around, gets ready, and clears out his nose, wet and loud. 

Richie says, “Don’t know what you’re talking about. That little shoulder thing you do is so cute.” 

Eddie crumples the tissue up, shoves it in his pocket with the rest, and rolls his eyes. His cheeks are pink when he looks back at him, flushed from the exertion. “You’re annoying. Can we go get ice cream now?” 

“Yes, Your Highness.” Richie folds his body into a half-bow. “C’mon. We’re almost there.” 

They spend a decent amount of time at the parlor; one of the guys Stan doesn’t particularly hate ( _he is decent, I guess, and actually knows how to put soft-serve on a cone, so he’s not entirely worthless_ ) is working, so it’s less of a challenge getting Eddie to try all the flavors he’s interested in. A little girl tells him she likes the rum raisin, which makes Eddie test it out. He doesn’t agree. He settles on cookies and cream with Oreo crumbles, but ends up eating most of Richie’s. As it turns out he has a remarkable sweet tooth and Richie finds the fudge brownie too sugary for his liking. At some point, they swap, but Richie doesn’t remember when that happened.

The arcade is full of kids ditching class, most of them from one of the middle schools, but Richie recognizes a few from his classes or, honestly, just the hallway, passing by to get to where he needs to go next. He debates taking the flower out of his hair, just remembering it’s there—fuck, Greta _saw_ him like this—but thinks otherwise. He kind of likes it, the floral smell following him around, sweet and simple. The way he and Eddie match. He pats it with two fingers and ushers Eddie to the coin machine. 

He feeds it a ten dollar bill, not caring that it’s probably a waste, and is pleased to see that the Street Fighter machine is vacant. _A sign,_ he thinks. He gets to start over, which, for some reason, matters here, with the multi-colored carpet and sticky surfaces. Some small kid shrieks. It makes his head hurt.

But nothing makes him more nervous than feeding a token to the game and watching it blink awake, ready for him. He closes his hand around the joystick, taps at the buttons anxiously, and, well—

He wasn’t lying about being rusty.

It is _infuriating_ getting his ass kicked by a computer, of all fucking things. The annoyance that fills him overrides his nerves. He has no time to worry about the past or to focus hard enough on the last time he was here that he recreates it: Everyone else here staring and aware that he’s not… that he’s touching where he’s not supposed to. That his face is an open book and his heart is on his sleeve, even though he tries to hide it all. Who cares if another boy is standing next to him at the Street Fighter machine? _Who cares?_ No one gets to hurt him when it’s Eddie there.

And no one— _no one,_ not even the calibrated, computerized enemy—is going to beat him at this. It’s _his_ game.

Eddie watches him, hip against the side of the machine. “You stick your tongue out when you concentrate,” he tells him. “You look dumb.” 

“Thanks, you do, too,” Richie says. He slams his index finger so hard against a button it pulses with pain. “Are you _kid_ —”

The screen flashes, _YOU LOSE._

It just _keeps_ doing that. 

“Guess I was wrong,” Eddie replies. “Can’t believe that training regimen didn’t work out in the end.” 

“Oh, be quiet, it _will,_ ” Richie snaps. “My name used to be right there.” He taps his knuckle against the score list, where someone with a stupid name blinks back at him. _Mocks_ him. “I had the _top score._ ”

“So take it away from…” Eddie leans forward. “ _BigDix4Jesus._ What?” 

“So stupid.”

“Like Trashmouth is any better.”

“Trashmouth isn’t even on the same _level_ as that punk,” Richie replies. “I just have to—”

He loses. Again. 

And again.

And _again._

He’s just about to give up and kick the thing when Eddie places his hand over his, right there on the buttons. “Show me how to play,” he suggests. “Maybe you’ll win if you explain how it works.” 

Richie looks at their hands, touching right there in the light of the screen. Eddie is warm, comforting. A weight that wants to be there and isn’t afraid of him or what he wants or what it means. He remembers touching for too long, trying to convince someone else to play with him, someone who wasn’t Eddie or any of his friends. He’d been lonely, upset. Mad that they went to that house and almost fucking died there. Mad that Bill wanted to go _back._ Mad that Eddie broke his arm and almost got his face eaten. Mad that he’d almost lost him, just as he was finally getting his shit together, finally figuring out what all those weird feelings in his gut meant. It didn’t mean anything when he asked that kid to play one more game; he just wanted companionship. Company. But Richie is clingy at best and annoying at worst and everything he does gets misconstrued. Gets read wrong.

Of course that kid _had_ to be Bowers’ cousin. Makes it all the more sweeter, getting attacked for that around the same time he started to never see Eddie again.

He blinks all that away, not eager to waste his two hours of fun on shit he can’t change. He can’t stop the meekness that escapes him, though, when he says, “Okay.”

It’s not like it’s a hard game to figure out, but Eddie is truly horrendous at it. He doesn’t listen to a thing Richie says, even as he painstakingly goes through each and every motion. He tells him to duck and he punches instead. He loses.

“Like this,” Richie says, stepping into him, Eddie’s back flush against his chest. He is very warm, still zipped up into his jacket. The heat is blasting in here.

He ghosts his hands over Eddie’s, then just takes them, pressing both of their fingers down on buttons, moving the joystick as one. It’s awkward, uncomfortable. Their character jerks around a lot instead of fighting, but at least he manages to avoid getting kicked in the face.

Eddie elbows him in the gut. Richie inhales sharply, bites down on his tongue, and ignores Eddie’s quiet, little _sorry._ It doesn’t matter in the long run. He’d rather have bruises from being this close to Eddie, from being able to have this interaction. The whole thing has Richie’s heart racing. He is _buzzing._

Who knew an arcade game could be so… who knew it could feel like _this?_

(Now maybe he understands what happened last time he was here.)

He moves forward even more, crowding into Eddie’s space, pushing him against the front of the machine. Eddie moves his elbows out a little more. Leans into him.

Richie’s just tall enough that he can rest his chin comfortably on Eddie’s shoulder.

They beat the computer.

Richie doesn’t know which one is more of a win: that, or the fact that he’s managed to interact with a boy at the arcade and no one fucking yells at him.

They emerge from the arcade a while later, Eddie having used all of their tickets to buy a yo-yo he keeps hitting his knees with. Richie shows him one of the, like, three tricks he taught himself how to do and says, “Bev was always better than me. Maybe she can teach you how to make it go to sleep since I never—”

Richie is cut off from finishing his sentence by a shout.

He recognizes it, in contact with that voice on a near daily basis. “Ben?”

“Ben?” Eddie repeats. He stuffs the yo-yo in his fanny pack and cranes his neck, squinting. “Where?”

Richie finds him quick, like he knows exactly where to look. “The bridge. He must be on his way to the… oh, _fuck_.”

“What?” Eddie asks. “What are you—where even _is_ the—is that _Bowers_?” He tightens his grip on the baseball bat, his knuckles turning white. 

“Fuck,” Richie repeats.

“Do we… should we… We should do something, right?”

But Richie is already moving, zigzagging through the busy sidewalk. He hears Eddie behind him, and then next to him, and then sees him ahead of him. Eddie was always the fastest of them. He’s so small he probably gets picked up with the wind and fuckin’, like, _flies_ to his destination.

Ben blurts, “ _Eddie?_ ”

Eddie skids to a stop, hip-checking Bowers into the side of the bridge. He trips, tumbles, grips the wood to keep from falling, but still scrapes his knee on the pavement. A silver knife falls from his fist and clatters the ground.

“Hi,” Eddie says to Ben. “Are you okay?”

“I…” Ben rubs at his eyes. Blinks at Eddie. Rubs his eyes again. “ _Eddie,_ ” he repeats. “You’re… you…”

Richie zeros in on the tattered hem of Ben’s shirt, ripped and bloody, like Bowers had stabbed him right through the material. “What happened? Are you okay? What are you doing here?”

“Finishing what I started,” Henry snaps at them.

Richie, Eddie, and Ben turn to look at him, pale and wild-eyed. There are very obvious beads of sweat dotting his hairline. He looks almost gaunt in his cheeks, like he hasn’t eaten in some time. He is dirty, too, boots covered in dried mud and unidentifiable stains on his shirt. He twitches.

Henry smiles at Eddie, unsettling and menacing. “Nice to see you again, Kaspbrak. We missed you.”

“Cannot say I missed you,” Eddie replies. “Didn’t even remember you.”

“Allow me to change that.” But as Bowers grapples for his knife ( _something about it is familiar_ ), Eddie stomps down on his hand. “Ow, _fuck,_ you sissy queerboy, Jesus _fucking—_ ”

Eddie smiles benevolently at him, like the names don’t affect him, like he didn’t just (probably) break several of Bowers’ fingers. Ben lets out a low groan, bending over to grab the knife. Closer to their faces, Richie has a brief moment of—is it déjà vu? He doesn’t know, but he _knows_ this knife.

And so does Ben, if the look on his face is anything to go by. He winds his arm up and sends it flying over the bridge. Richie hopes it lands in the Kenduskeag. It is particularly brutal today, crashing and racing over the shore and rocks. Bowers will never be able to find it.

“ _No!_ ” Henry yells. He clamors up, jeans ripped at the knee, and leans over the side of the bridge, looking down. “Where is it… why did you… I have to _finish…_ have to kill you all…” He balances on a plank, squinting into the water, into the brush. “He’s going to be so mad… so mad…” He twists his upper body, glaring at them. “I don’t need the knife to finish you off. I’ll just pummel you into the ground. Doesn’t matter how I do it, just that I do it.”

Eddie surges forward, a jerkish movement of his feet, and swings the bat with all his might.

Richie blinks, and time seems to slow down.

Richie blinks, and time seems to speed up.

He sees it both ways—Henry Bowers falling over the side of the Kissing Bridge and into the rush of the river below. He hears him yell, long and drawn out but also high-pitched and quick, and then there’s a violent splash.

Eddie peers over, clutching the bat to his chest, and gripping the top of the bridge. Coincidentally he is standing right by the _R+E_ Richie Wished into it all those months ago. The letters seem to glow at his close proximity.

Richie stares, dumbfounded in more ways than one. Eddie’s got a _real_ mean swing, that’s for fucking sure. 

Ben goes, “Eddie, what the _fuck,_ ” and it’s unclear what he’s referring to. Eddie? His actual, physical presence? The fact that Eddie _hit_ Bowers over the side of a _bridge_ with a _baseball bat?_

“Do you think he knows how to swim?” Eddie asks, tilting his head just a little bit. 

“I hope not,” Richie replies. “Otherwise we’re fucked.”

“I think we’re fucked either way,” Ben says slowly. “Did you really just do that? Are you really here?” He moves closer, arm outstretched like he wants to touch him. He doesn’t; he folds his fingers into his palm instead and presses them against his stomach. 

Coughing and spluttering comes from below, then Bowers’ voice, angry, loud, and promising revenge, “You fucking _losers!_ There’s nowhere you can go, you can’t hide from me, _I’ll kill you!_ ”

“Yes and yes,” Eddie answers Ben, “but I think we better run.”

Richie looks over the side, sees Bowers struggling to his feet, sopping wet, and says, “Yeah, yeah, we… Ben, we can explain it all at the Barrens, but we have to _go._ ” Richie takes the bat in one hand and grabs Eddie’s wrist with the other. Eddie grabs Ben and then they’re _sprinting,_ footsteps hard and heavy. 

Behind them, Bowers yells death threats. None of the adults in the vicinity bat an eye, seemingly unable to hear, but a young girl in braided pigtails bursts into tears. A boy in a tiny white polo shirt hugs her close. 

Another girl, this one in a red gingham dress, wanders close to the river, to Bowers’ death threats. She looks around, like she’s trying to find the source of the yelling, and then a long, purple tentacle bursts from the water, wraps around her leg and pulls her under. No one hears her scream. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we will see the other losers next chapter, it'll be great. stan's gonna do Some Stuff. bill will probably cry.


	7. heart pounding & splashing & reeling & finally feeling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Do what you have to,_ he is advised. The turtle is almost gone, a mere spot near the surface, ready to break through. Break free. _What you need to. It is what you were born to do, Eddie._
> 
> _What is it? What was I born to do?_
> 
> The sun shines too bright. The turtle disappears into nothingness. _You were made for destruction, but first… save your friend._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was supposed to come out a week ago but i went through the traumatizing death of my hamster so it was delayed while i very aggressively mourned :(
> 
> but! losers reunion! eddie has important friendships with people besides richie! stan is straight savage! bill says maybe one line!

1

They run until they physically can’t, until Ben is huffing and puffing behind them. He is a blur of blonde hair and flushed, flushed cheeks when Eddie checks, when he feels his grip on his hand slacken, loosen, almost let go. They’re both sweaty—it isn’t clear who is the reason for the lack of grip here—and the amount of layers Eddie is wearing seem almost comical as the sun beats down on them, as the adrenaline spikes hot through his bloodstream. 

But they can’t stop. They _can’t._ Once Henry finds his knife, wherever it ended up, he’s up on his feet again, and what Eddie remembers of him, he’s swift. He’s fast. He’s got the wind beneath his fucking _wings,_ and he can get wherever they are, wherever they want to be, faster than they can even think of it. Faster than they can _get_ there. 

Richie’s long legs fucking gallop ahead of them, and Eddie tries to match him, tries to will himself a few more inches and the stamina for long-distance running, but he’s been on house arrest for four years, hasn’t so much as done a single physical activity besides a half-assed and quite sad attempt at yoga, and Ben is—

Ben is _bleeding._

“Rich,” Eddie gasps, tugging on his hand. It’s tightly wound around Eddie’s, like he’s afraid to let go, like he thinks he’ll lose him. Eddie trips, unable to do two things at once (three, really, if he thinks about it, worrying about Ben the way he is), and Richie stumbles to catch him before he hits the ground. “Richie, we have to… we have to stop. Ben is… Ben’s—“

Ben is hunched over, backpack practically empty, school books who the fuck knows where, hands on his knees. He’s breathing heavy. No, he’s hyperventilating. No, he’s—

“I’m fine,” Ben says, and then he throws up.

Ben is not fine. 

“ _Fuck,_ ” Richie curses, holding out the _u_ like it’s a long warbling note of a song. He looks past Eddie and Ben like they aren’t there, like they aren’t important. But they are. His hands are shaking, Eddie sees that. The two of them are so important, and he’s not looking _past_ them, no, that’s wrong; he’s looking back at the distance they made, and he does not seem pleased. He presses his mouth into a tight line, accentuating his cheekbone. “Fuck,” he says again, and then he sits on the ground, a full plop. Eddie thinks he hears his tailbone crack on the pavement. “Go,” he tells Eddie, “do what you have to. I’ll—watch.” 

Eddie bites his lip, looking down at Richie, deflated and exhausted. There have been more hours in this day alone that he’s been awake than he’s been asleep. Richie looks ready to knock out at any second, but he’s not going to show it. Not going to let anyone but himself know. Too bad Eddie’s spent years memorizing the planes of his face, the expressions that live on it. He knows Richie is tired. He knows Richie will do nothing about it. 

He says, “Watch what? Me or the street?” 

Richie’s mouth twists into a grin, lazy and intrigued. “Both,” he says. “Don’t blame me when we get _Texas Chainsaw Massacre_ ’d though. You bein’ all doctorly really gets me goin’.”

“Mm,” Eddie replies, rubbing at his chin to keep himself from smiling. “How about you go sit over there, in front of us, and make sure Bowers doesn’t come finish the job?” 

“Aw, Eds,” Richie complains. “You really ruin all my fun.”

“Thought I added to it,” Eddie quips. He flails his arms trying to get out of his winter coat, too hot, too hot, too hot, and drops it to the ground before unzipping his fanny pack. 

“Most of the time,” Richie says, getting up. He tweaks Eddie’s ear, twists it, and runs two fingers through the hair behind it. “That little striptease made up for it, though. Get patchin’, Doc.” 

Ben wheezes, still stationary, staring at the multicolored upchuck that stains the whites of his sneakers. “I have no idea how this happened,” he says, careful, considered, and slow, easy and measured like the breaths he’s taking, “but I’m glad y’all can still flirt in times of crisis.” He coughs. “It’s comforting.” 

Richie shoots him some god awful finger guns. “I aim to be consistent.”

“I don’t even know what flirting is,” Eddie replies. He pulls a travel-sized bottle of hydrogen peroxide out of his pack, takes one of those tissues Richie bought, and rips open an alcohol wipe with his teeth. 

Ben snort-coughs-groans. “It’s whatever that was,” he says. “Seriously. I’m fine. I don’t need any of…”

Richie has his back to them, stiff, body angled so he can turn to look if he needs to. The rest of him is facing front to look into the distance, back at the long strip of shops. There seems to be a commotion. Eddie hears the shouts, the sirens roaring. They can’t find them like this, dirty, bleeding, and remarkably incriminating. 

“You’re bleeding out through a very impressive stab wound, very ala eighty-nine, love the memories that brings up, and you threw up on your nice shoes,” Richie says. “All signs point to _not fine,_ Haystack. Let the doctor do his thing.”

“I threw up from exertion.”

“You run track,” Richie says. “Jump hurdles. Sprint. Cross country. Whatever. You’re not vomiting from pushing yourself. Bowers probably poisoned the knife and you’ve only minutes to live. Any secrets you’d like to share?”

“ _Richie!_ ”

“Yeah,” Ben snaps at him. There’s sweat on his face. At his collar. “You’re an asshole.”

Richie hums. “Not a secret, but I appreciate the effort.”

Eddie glares at him but he can’t see; he makes it good, though, puts all his energy into it. Hopes Richie feels it. 

Then he focuses on the mess at Ben’s stomach, right by the belly button. It stirs something in Eddie, a memory— _there’s a kid out back, looks like someone killed him—_ and he knows what to do. “This’ll sting,” he warns. “I’m going to clean it first. He may not have poisoned it, but Richie has a point: It could be dirty. D’you want—?”

“No.” Ben shakes his head. “Just… just do it. It’ll be—“

“Fine?” Eddie guesses. “Sure.” He hands him his jacket anyway. “Bite down on the sleeve.”

Ben doesn’t seem to want to, but Eddie stares until he does, teething the thick material of his winter coat, purchased for literally no good reason, and then he’s dumping the hydrogen peroxide and wiping it away after it bubbles. Ben makes a jerking reaction, kicking out, and squealing into Eddie’s coat. Eddie, a good friend, ignores it. 

He clears off the blood around the wound, deep and jagged, the beginning of a letter, and smooths a bandage (or two) over the line. It immediately pinkens because this is something that truly needs stitches, but Eddie has neither time nor proper supplies on his side. Fishing line won’t cut it this time. He rips long strips of medical tape off with his mouth, presses them to the sides of each bandage, and debates wrapping the entire thing of gauze around Ben’s middle. It seems, in the end, like more of a waste. 

He stares at it, at his work, and it _seems_ done, but… it’s still there, whatever it is. Something clings to it, something he can’t wash off. It’s annoying. Unnerving. Eddie hovers a palm over it, like that’ll do any good, and feels _it._ The… the only word for it in his limited, scattered-brained vocabulary is bad. It feels _bad,_ and he thinks he absorbs it, some of it. Ben sighs just a little, like he’s free of something. It makes Eddie’s hands feel heavier, almost. Uncomfortable. 

Eddie tugs his lower lip into his mouth, starts putting his things away, fitting them into the fanny pack like he’s playing Tetris, and ignores the bloodstains on his fingertips. 

_War wounds._ He hasn’t had—or been near—any in a long, long time. His arm twinges at the thought.

“You good to go, Romeo?” Richie asks. “Something weird is happening in town and I want to get as far away as possible.”

Eddie looks around Ben at Richie’s mess of black curls. “You think we caused it?”

“No, but Benny boy’s got chop meat for a stomach and we don’t have any explanations for it,” Richie answers. “All we’ve got is a baseball bat and your cute face, and I don’t think it’s gonna cut it this time, shortstack.”

“Uncanny,” Ben says, and he avoids Eddie’s proffered hand to hoist himself up with a little grimace he shakes out once he’s standing. 

It is not the last time the word ( _uncanny_ ) comes into play as the three of them continue on. Ben shuffles to the side, between the two of them but closer to Eddie, and he looks at him like he’s—like it’s—like it’s _uncanny._ Like he can’t fathom it. Like Eddie is a mystery in one of the novels Ben likes—Eddie has a bunch of them, dog-eared and beat-up. _Hardy Boys_ and a few _Babysitter’s Club_ s, covers ripped off or covered to hide from bullies (from Eddie’s mom, primarily). He wants to solve the mystery of Eddie but doesn’t have all the pieces. 

Richie walks backwards, one eye on the two of them, the other on town. A fire truck rolls up, siren loud and frightening, breaking the silence. An ambulance is next. Half the goddamn police force. Richie grumbles about it, asks Ben, “Where’d you come from that you ended up at the bridge?”

Eddie glances over at him. “I went to school first,” Ben admits. 

“Like a loser,” Richie chirps.

“I figured _one_ of us had to show up or it’d be suspicious!” Ben insists. 

Richie snorts. “Because we’re _soooo_ popular and people would notice.”

“Well, yeah, they would,” Ben retorts easily. “We’re always getting into some kind of trouble—“

“—my record is _spotless,_ ” Richie interrupts. 

“You hijack the announcements every day at lunch to recite curse words in different languages,” Ben says, deadpan. “Stan gets into fights with kids half his size for, what, like, the _thrill?_ I don’t know. Bill thinks he can get away with anything and everything, _including_ a gross misuse of power to get answers to math tests. No one’s record is _spotless._ I figure if one of us—“

Richie stops walking, stares at him, says, “You wanted to get the homework so you wouldn’t be behind.”

“My GPA is perfect,” Ben grouses. “A vague, uninformative phone call at six AM is not going to change that. Sue me.”

“My dad’s a dentist, not a lawyer. No can do, bud.” Richie keeps walking, trips over a crack in the sidewalk. Flails his arms like he’s going to propel himself back up, force of motion or whatever, and Eddie shoots forward to keep him upright. 

Ben shakes his head. Mouths, _Let him._

Eddie does not, which ends up with— 

Well, he shoulda saw that coming, really. 

Richie wraps both his arms around Eddie’s back, right under the armpits, and lifts him up. Spins him. Eddie doesn’t know if he enjoys this or not, but he lets it happen, feels the wind in his hair and the heat of Richie’s laughter on his cheek. 

Two seconds later, he pinches him. Richie puts him down. 

“So, Ben, Benny-boo, Benny-boy, Haystack Calhoun, wrestler of the _aaaages_ ”—Richie uses an announcer voice here—“have you had an odd encounters with the netherworld? Any seances gone wrong? Visits from horrifying circus acts from years past?”

Ben blinks. “ _Seances._ ”

“Yeah, any _yeses_ on the ol’ Ouija board? Did Timmy die in that well and tell you the secrets of that world from beyond the veil? Didja have to call the GhostBusters up to vacuum Casper the Friendly Ghost outta ya chimney?”

“I—what do you _watch_ on TV, Rich?”

Eddie bites his tongue to keep himself from laughing outright. 

“Late-night programming, baby,” Richie says. “Hit that sweet spot around four AM and the ladies go buck _wild_ for the—“ Eddie looks at him, and looks at him, and _looks_ at him, eyes wide and curious and a little bit accusatory. “Mainly old horror movies. Black and white thrillers. Creepy shit. Keeps me on my toes. Any of that in your life, Benjamin?”

“The porn or the suspense movies?”

“Either. Both. I don’t judge.”

Eddie furrows his brow and wonders, if not for the second time in the past three minutes, what he sees in Richie. What he _ever_ saw… and then Richie smiles at him, big and pretty, and he forgets for a moment that he’s annoying and funny and the best person Eddie knows—and he’s not just saying that because right now he’s kinda the _only_ person he knows. 

But it’s also… it’s just… Richie takes a really long time getting to the point. He loves words, loves the sound of his voice, loves to talk. His vocal cords must be plucked over three thousand times a day, Eddie is convinced. 

“No one wants to know about your porn consumption,” Eddie tells Ben honestly. “Richie just wants to know if you’ve had any weird experiences with—with a clown.” He clears his throat, those pesky seasonal allergies closing it up a bit. “ _The_ clown, specifically.” 

“Clown? No. Can’t say I have. What clown? _The_ clown? Not very specific.” Ben says this all too fast and too frenzied for it to be the truth. 

Richie takes a step forward, wanting to enter his personal space bubble, but Eddie sidesteps into Richie, hip to hip. Ben’s eyes are wild, gaze flickering here, there, and everywhere; he looks at Eddie’s nose, Richie’s shoulder, the space between them. A tree in the distance. The stain on his toe. 

He is lying. Eddie knows it. 

Eddie is good with liars—intentional and otherwise. 

He bumps hips with Richie, gets him to keep moving, and reaches a hand as casually as he can to twine with Richie’s. He hasn’t told anyone this next bit, not even his mom, not like she’d care or listen, so he’s a bit… he’s apprehensive. Nervous. Voicing things that happen to you that don’t make sense? Hard. You can never figure out if anyone believes you. 

( _They will. They always did._ )

“I have a lot of dreams,” Eddie starts up. He picks up his game again, the sidewalk one. One foot, two foot, crack, jump. “There was this one with a balloon, a—“

“—red balloon,” Ben adds. “The balloons are red. They always are.”

“Sometimes they’re multicolored,” Richie offers. “We love variety. A good pink balloon really tricks ya. Sweet, safe, _cute,_ and then—“

Eddie digs a nail into his palm. “Mostly they’re red. In my dreams, that’s the only color they are because that’s the color of, uh. Blood.”

“Blood is red,” Richie agrees, using this tone of voice that’s like—that’s, like, _scholarly._ Like a teacher, like he’s teaching them this because they don’t know it. Eddie refrains from pinching him again. 

A lot of things about Richie have come back to him in the time since he’s fallen through his window, a result of magic and tightly intertwined lives tying them together. He can do nothing now _but_ know Richie. It is embedded in him like his own DNA. One of the things he’s rediscovered is that words are Richie’s thing, both in that he likes them and he’s good at them, in that he can manipulate the way they sound. But he uses them when he’s nervous, too. Says things that seem dumb in the moment, that aren’t as funny or don’t hit quite right, but when you look back, you realize _hey, Richie helped us get from here to there and it took three dick jokes, one of which included him_ grabbing _his own and now you kind of, sort of, a little bit know what his looks like because you kind of, sort of, a little bit watched him do it._

Words help Richie and because Richie helps his friends, words help them, so.

Blood is red, yes, and the balloons are red in Eddie’s dreams because he’s dreaming of dying, or choking on his own bodily fluids, or succumbing to some kind of internal wound or disease, and…

“There was only one,” he goes on. He sucks on his lower lip, squints, and steps on a crack. He wonders if it’s true, if he did break his mother’s back. “Red. It just floated there, then it told me it missed me, and it couldn’t wait to see me again, and it ended up inside of me. Right here.” He puts a hand to his chest, to where his ribs meet. “I couldn’t get rid of it, and it got bigger, and bigger, and bigger until it just— _popped._ ” 

Richie stops and Ben falters, but Eddie pushes them forward. They have to get more distance between them and that, whatever’s behind them. “I woke up with this, like—this pressure in my chest, nothing new, obviously, but when I threw up, it was red, like the balloon. Like blood.” He steps on another crack. “My mom didn’t see anything, just thought I was making a scene. Like I was six or something. But it was there, like… like—“ 

“Like Bev’s bathroom,” Ben provides. His voice trembles. 

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Like Bev’s bathroom.” 

Ben heaves a breath, looks over the side of the bridge—it’s long, this stream, but there’s only one part of it that’s _the_ Kissing Bridge. It’s a typical November day, or so Eddie thinks, not having seen one from outside his house in a significant time. Leaves fall, change color, crumble. Trees are starting to look barren, tall and sad, waiting for that final, cruel kiss of winter. The sky holds clouds that hide the sun; a breeze tails them, reminds them that looks are deceiving and the weather is a fickle thing. Eddie ignores the chill, tightens the arms of his jacket, one indented with Ben’s teeth, around his waist, and waits for Ben to say something.

Because he will.

Ben is having one of those moments. A capital- _M_ moment. Life-changing. Important. He is about to, Eddie hopes, _divulge._

He turns to Eddie, blue eyes shining. “Where have you been this whole time?” 

“Home,” Eddie answers. 

Richie lets out a snuffle-sniff-sigh, a weird sound. A disgruntled sound.

“Like.” Ben wets his lips. Presses them together. Pries them apart. “Like home? At your house? Just…” He spins about wildly, almost like a top (more like a compass), and points vaguely in the direction Eddie and Richie came. “Just that way? In that house?” 

“You remembered it?” 

“Just now,” Ben says to Richie, who is alight with fervor. With craze. “Well, no, maybe earlier this morning. Maybe at—“ 

Richie sighs again. Scoffs. Kicks the toe of his sneaker at the ground. A rock goes sailing. “Two-thirty in the morning, give or take,” he provides. 

Ben blinks at him, head tilted, considering. Building. Creating. Whatever it is, Eddie does not know, but it makes sense to Ben, who turns to look at him next. “I woke up remembering your house,” he tells him. “The structure. How it was built. The creaky stair, how it could use more natural light.” 

“Looks the same,” Richie says dryly. “‘Cept the kitchen. They feng shui’d or some shit. Did nothing for the energy, though. Vibes are still bad.” 

“So we coulda knocked on the door,” Ben starts up slowly, “and you’d’ve answered?” 

Eddie smiles, sort of. It feels too small, too unnatural; he swallows instead. “If you remembered where it was,” he says. “Yeah. I would’ve.”

Ben staggers forward. It’s like he has no control over his feet. Richie pulls Eddie’s arm by accident, which hurts, but Eddie does not move back like he wants him to. He stays put, waits for Ben to meet him, and holds his gaze steadily. Ben’s own is narrowed, cursory. He is looking for something, the complete opposite of Richie, who’d just believed Eddie to be who he was, who wouldn’t let him be anything but that.

Ben lifts a hand, waves it awkwardly. 

Eddie nods with a little shrug and Ben’s fingers are pressing to his ear. The knot at his nose. The jut of his cheekbone beneath his eye. “It doesn’t…” Ben mumbles. “But…” He drops his hand, shoves it in his pocket. “How are you here, Eddie?” 

“Magic,” Eddie answers immediately. It swirls between them, warm and soft. Sweet like candy and free like a summer’s day when you’re twelve, endless and infinite. He sees it touch Ben where he touched Eddie—earlobe, tip of the nose, cheek. It ruffles his hair. It welcomes him. Greets him. Says, _Hello, Ben, it is nice to see you again._ And Ben… he answers back, follows it, twisting and turning. 

Eddie glances back at Richie, wondering if he can see it, too—what he created when he carved their initials in the bridge, when he Wished. Golden tendrils of possibility extend between them, tying them together. “Richie, too,” he adds, but it’s almost too late for it, like the moment has passed for more information. 

Ben frowns at him, confused, which makes Eddie elaborate. “I’m here,” he says, “because of magic. Magic and Richie. Both.”

With a nod and a little more oomph in his step, Ben drops his useless backpack near a tree, and tells them, “When I showered last night, I saw a mummy in the mirror.” 

Richie’s mouth cracks into this half-grin sort of thing. Eddie likes it, wants to press his fingers to it. (He doesn’t.) “You sure you just didn’t wipe all the bubbles off your face?”

“Fuck off,” Ben snaps, laughing. “There was a mummy in the mirror and it was me, me from years ago, all covered in this white linen, drying and keeping me in one place. It was me, and it was the clown—yeah, _the_ clown—and It told me… It told me—“ 

“It missed you,” Eddie suggests.

“Yeah,” says Ben, “and that It would play with me if—“

“—if you went to It,” Richie mutters. He holds Eddie’s wrist so tight Eddie feels his pulse beat double time there, trying to gauge the threat. “It wants us to go to It, but I don’t think It wants to play the way we used to.” 

“It told me I knew how to get there,” Ben adds. “I think It is right.” 

“Yeah.” Richie’s nails are digging crescent moons in the skin of Eddie’s forearm. “It is. We all know how to get there. We all know what It wants. What It needs.” 

_SEE YOU SOON,_ Eddie remembers. 

He also remembers being hungry. Like, so hungry. He wanted something so oddly specific that morning, something greasy and bad that his mother would never agree to. He had egg whites instead. Plain toast. The sugar of an apple slice. 

Ben zips and unzips the front of his coat. The sound would be irritating if Eddie weren’t already listening to the crescendo of his own heartbeat in his ears, roaring like a stream approaching a waterfall. “Seems a little early for It to be back.” 

“Yeah,” Richie says. 

“Twenty-something years too early,” Ben murmurs, scrunching up his face as he does the math. He cringes, hand to his stomach.

Eddie ignores the utter betrayal of his body, the fear and the flight or fight response. Flight is winning somehow, even after all of this, even after leaving his _house._ He sifts through the shit in his pack, procures a large bottle of Tylenol. “You want?” 

“Will it help?” 

“Supposed to,” Eddie answers. He pours two into his palm. Hesitates. Adds a third. 

Ben takes them and swallows them dry. “Any reason why It has decided to return so soon? Thought it got its fill on the Fourth of July.” 

Richie rubs a fist over his mouth, looks away from them, back at the cacophony in town. “I reckon that’s what we’re all meeting up at the Barrens to talk about.” 

Ben follows Richie’s gaze. Eddie does not. He blows his nose again. 

His feet move on their own accord towards the edge of the road, to the place the pavement gives way to dirt and trees, to large rocks he can sit on, stones he can jump on to cross the stream. He unties his coat, leaves it on the grass and sits on one of them, wonders how cold he’ll get if he takes off his socks and sneakers to stick his toes in the river. 

Richie and Ben are illuminated by the strength of the November sun, bright and straight-backed, like they are soldiers watching the enemy troops approach. It’s just cars and noise. The police chief is taping off the area of the bridge they were just at, where Henry fell over. Eddie hopes briefly that means they’ve found a body, _his_ body, and he’s dead, then berates himself for thinking that. He knows that is not the case. It would never be that easy. Henry Bowers would never just die by falling into a river. 

He dips his fingers into the water instead. It’s cold, closer to freezing than is comfortable. Light reflects off its surface, bright and painful. Eddie squints, swipes through it, creates ripples. 

Ahead of him, Richie and Ben’s conversation travels like the wind. “The return of Eddie,” Ben muses. He sounds older than he is. Eddie doesn’t like it, the knowledge that he’s missed so much. “The return of It.” 

Ben turns to look at him, and that age is back on his face, in the shape of his jaw and the set of his mouth. It disappears as quickly as Eddie sees it, wrapped in that golden aura again when he smiles. “Magic and Richie, that’s what you said? That’s how you’re here?” 

Eddie nods. 

“Oh, Richie,” Ben says, soft. _Knowing._

“Shut up, Haystack,” Richie grumbles, shoving him. “Don’t look at me like that. You don’t know shit.” 

Ben lifts a shoulder, twists on his heel. “I may not know shit, but I do know a thing or two about this town, Richie.” 

“Yeah,” Richie agrees. “Yeah, you do.”

“I’m glad you’re here. Back,” Ben says to Eddie. His voice is different, more agreeable, less passive-aggressive. “Do you plan on staying?” 

There is nothing Eddie wants more, but his gut tells him that’s not his decision. “If they’ll have me,” he answers. He does not know, though, who _they_ are. 

Whatever he said, whatever it means to them, consumes the trio. Richie stares at Eddie, eyes wide behind his glasses, and Ben’s mouth does this sad sort of smile thing, like he’s happy but he’s also miserable about it. Eddie doesn’t like either expression; he goes back to flicking his fingers into the water. He likes the sensation, the naturalness. 

He does not like the quiet that’s settled between them. He can hear everything, even the things unspoken, the silence between them. The water laps at Eddie’s hand, the skin of his ankles. His shoes are soaked. He doesn’t care. 

Two alarms go off, one at Ben’s wrist and the other at Richie’s. Ben fumbles to turn his off, the sound jarring, but Richie lets his go on. Lets it fill this unspeakable, unnamable void, shrill and loud, plucking at every fiber of their beings. It seems to shake through Derry, through the very foundations, the landlines that make it what it is. 

Eddie feels it vibrate through his whole body, like each of his veins is tuned to it, like he is a vessel meant to be played at a recital. A violin. A cello. A viola. A guitar.

Behind him, someone says, acidic, warped, nasally, “I sure do love being on time.” 

Eddie lunges for his baseball bat, but it is too far away, wrapped up in his coat. 

Belch Huggins’ shadow falls over him, large and dark. He looks as he always has, a mindless drone, Yankees hat twisted backwards on his head. Eddie stares up at him, a stab of cold fear rushing through him as he recalls every bad thing he’s been a part of in Eddie’s short-lived life. All the bad memories he has either star him and the rest of Bowers’ gang, that infernal clown, or his mother, and they almost all have that look in their eye. The one Belch is sporting now. Dark, deliberate. No thoughts, just action. 

There’s a glazed-over sheen there juxtaposed with the lax muscles on his face and the rigidness of the rest of him. He’s doing, but he has a very slim grasp of what it _is_ he’s doing. 

Still Eddie jerks forward again, hoping his arm lengthens or he grabs a rock or something fucking _magical_ happens, but Belch gets him by the back of his sweater, the neck, and keeps him in place. It chokes him, just a little bit, and Eddie reaches up to make room, shoving two fingers between the collar and his throat.

He coughs, tries to twist to look at him. “You don’t have to do this,” he croaks.

Belch snorts. Grins. “Yeah, I do,” he says. “I haven’t got a choice.” 

“Everyone’s”—Eddie struggles to form the words, uses what’s left of his brain cells to wonder where Richie and Ben are, they wouldn’t just _leave him—_ “got a ch-choice.”

“Not me,” Belch intones. It doesn’t sound real, his voice. Eddie can break through it if he knows a thing about him, if he knows how to reach him, but nothing comes to mind. Eddie doesn’t know him, never bothered to. Belch was always shoving his head in toilets and smearing his face in dirt, or mud, or shit. Stealing his math homework, and breaking his pencils, and shoving him into lockers. “And not you.” Belch grabs Eddie by the back of the head and grips his hair tight enough that Eddie thinks his scalp is being ripped off. “We have to finish what we started.”

The last thing Eddie hears before he goes under, head submerged, water up his nose, arms flailing, is Belch’s voice. It rings in his ears, circles his brain. It’s the worst final thought. 

_We_

_have_

_to_

_kill_

_them_

_all_

* * *

2

Sonia hates this part of her ride. 

The interstate isn’t as packed as she imagined (a blessing), but she still can’t get this asshole behind her to stop tailgating. She could, if she wanted, step hard on her break and cause a scene, wreck the back of her sedan and the front of their—red convertible, but that’s too much paperwork and calls to insurance companies and she will be held liable for the mess, which is her fault. She’ll allow that. 

She hates mess, and work, and being held accountable, so she flicks on her blinker and merges into the center lane. She hates being here, likes the safety of being near exits in case she overshoots (she doesn’t), but it’s fine. Really. 

What _isn’t_ fine is the stretch of space for the next hour or so that has no access to _good_ radio stations. She doesn’t want to listen to the news, or an hour dedicated to songs of the twenties, or that nonsense she hears Eddie play in his bedroom over and over. 

She fiddles with the knob again, searching, and settles on the monotone of some radio newscaster (weather, recent horrors, projected scores for the next football game and who’s retiring after this season) when something—when—

She slams both feet on the brake. 

The entire car shoots forward, trunk all but lifted off the ground. Horns honk loud, long, and irritated. They move around her, surprisingly none of them crashing into her backside, and Sonia ignores their angry tirades, the shouts, the crass flicking of middle fingers. She stares at the area her radio sits. It reads the time. It is still set to that boring man’s news show. 

The voice that comes out, though. 

The _voice._

_WELCOME TO RICHIE TOZIER’S ALL-DEAD ROCK SHOW. DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR SON IS, MRS. KASPBRAK?_

“He’s at home,” she answers the car radio. The name makes her grit her teeth. _Richie Tozier._

There’s no answer, which. It’s a car radio. Of course there isn’t. 

She takes a breath to calm herself, flips down her mirror. She ignores everyone on the road, lets them drive around her, lets herself inconvenience them like she is so easily inconvenienced herself. She flips the ends of her hair, carefully styled. There are purple bags beneath her eyes, a result of her consistent worry over her ungrateful son, but she’s done her best to cover them up. 

With a glance behind her and to the side, Sonia returns to the left lane and continues on her way. She resolves to stop at a diner, grab a cup of coffee, and use their pay phone. Eddie is at home, studying to get a good SAT score even though he will not need one for admittance to the community college she’s carefully chosen for him, thirty minutes away with no option to dorm. 

There’s an exit up ahead with a sign indicating a rest stop. Sonia follows it. 

The radio comes to life once more. _DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR SON IS, MRS. KASPBRAK?_

Sonia sniffs, indicates a turn, and says again, with more authority, “At home.” 

_IS HE, MRS. KASPBRAK? DOES THIS SOUND LIKE YOUR SON IS AT HOME? DOES THIS SOUND LIKE HE’S ALONE?_

Sonia refrains from slamming on the brake again, Richard Tozier’s irritating—his _grating_ voice vibrating through her speakers, and makes a completely illegal and probably wildly unsafe u-turn. 

* * *

3

Richie coughs loud and hard, and for a long, long time. It feels like he’s expelling everything inside of him: his large intestine, the small one, his stomach, each rib, his heart, his lungs. It’s all shrinking, condensing, forcing itself up and through his throat and then out, washing all over him in one great _heave._

In short, it really fucking hurts. 

He blinks, eyelashes wet, sticking to each other, glasses god knows fucking where. The world is out of focus, his chest aches, and there is a snotty, salty, sulphuric scent in his nose and his mouth. He feels it trickle down his incredibly sore throat like some kind of post nasal drip. What he does see—what he _can_ see—is the dark red hair of Bev, swept out of her face, tied into a nub at the base of her neck. She is close enough that he can make out the freckles under her right eye, the sliver of a scar cutting through her upper lip. 

Richie coughs again. Bev turns him onto his side so he can—he’s throwing up _water,_ harsh and forceful. 

He stops after a second, a minute, an hour, he doesn’t know, and drops down on his back again. Bev continues to hover, concerned. Richie forces his mouth, chapped and bruised, into a grin, as is his custom, and says, “I always knew you wanted to kiss me, Marsh.” 

Bev rolls her eyes. “If I wanted to kiss you, you’d know,” she retorts. She plucks at a curl wrapped around his ear and puts it back in place. “I was saving your _life,_ idiot.”

“Yeah,” Richie replies, forcing himself up. “A likely story.” He leans forward, puckering his lips. 

She shoves him back down. He lands with thud on the riverbed. He thinks his ribs crack. He thinks he’s been beat up enough today and yet the punches keep coming… and this time, it’s from his _friend!_ The audacity. 

“He’s fine, guys!” she yells behind her. 

Richie squints where she yells, tries to make out the figures and blobs he sees, but there’s nothing, just colors and shapes. It is truly _astounding_ how much he can’t see. He taps Bev’s wrist insistently. “Glasses,” he says. “Where are my glasses?” He pitches his voice into a mediocre version of Velma’s. “I can’t see _without_ my glasses, _Daphne!_ ” 

“Oh, shut up, you’re Shaggy if anything,” Bev shoots back. She hands them over with a little smile. “Lenses are… lenses are fine, but they, uh.” 

He sighs. “Snapped. Yeah. Fuckin’ figures.” He pushes the pieces together, holds them up to his eyes, and looks around. 

Mike is here now, standing over Ben, and when he sees Richie looking at him, sees that he’s conscious and breathing and not _dead,_ he shouts, even though he’s not that far away, “We need to change Ben’s bandages!”

Richie’s hearing is so-so. His ears are clogged, full of water, he thinks. He tilts his head to the side, shakes it out. Nothing happens; he just feels like a dog, sort of. Waterlogged. Drenched. 

It takes him a second (and a bit of sticking his finger deep into his ear) to realize that despite needing Mike to yell from literally three feet away, he hasn’t heard any mention of Eddie or Stan. Hasn’t heard _them,_ either, their voices. 

Panic seizes at him, his memory fuzzy. His head hurts, right behind his eyes. He doesn’t remember how he got here, from point A—seeing Eddie in the river, seeing Eddie’s face getting shoved in said riv—

Holy shit. 

_Holy shit._

They were there, and now they’re here, and Richie throws up more disgusting sewer-river water all over Bev’s chest, all over himself, at the thought that they aren’t. That it’s just Richie and Bev, and over there, Ben and Mike. He is _paralyzed_ by it, his limbs locked and frozen. He drops his glasses into his lap, into the water, and Bev reaches to grab them before they take off with the current. He watches all of his blindly, literally and figuratively, and strains to hear the way Eddie pronounces all those big, fancy words he doesn’t need to know or Stan’s futile attempts to keep himself from laughing. 

It’s just Richie’s own breathing, Mike’s worries, Ben’s insistences that he’s fine (a common theme), and Bev’s soft hum of a response to Richie’s entire breakdown.

“It’s okay,” she says. “You’re okay, Richie. You’re fine. You’re just—you’re wet.” 

But it’s not.

It’s _not._

He tries to wriggle out of her touch, even as she attempts to keep him seated, to keep him still. It reminds him too much of the lack of mobility he faced while he was being _fucking drowned,_ and it all comes to him then.

He’d been standing with Ben, _annoyed_ at Ben and his inherent ability of knowing him, and Belch appeared. They’d never faced one of them alone before successfully, but Richie’d been having a pretty good day so far, so he thought maybe they could take him. _Wrong._ Belch wasn’t alone. Victor Criss and Patrick Hockstetter emerged from god knows where, from the goddamn shadows like old-timey villains, and it’s Criss’s laugh Richie hears like birdsong.

He’d dug his fingers into Richie’s hair, pulled too tightly to be anything other than for his own amusement, and slammed him over and over into the stream until he’d been dizzy with pain—and then he’d kept his head under. The water stung, entered through his nose and his mouth and maybe even his fucking eyes. He lost consciousness, regained it, lost it again, like some sick sort of joke, aware that he was hanging on by a thread. He’d pulled at it, tried to jolt it into action, but it merely made him wonder about Ben. About Eddie. _Where were they? What was happening to them? Would the magic of this place, of this town, of them, please help them out just a little?_

The magic didn’t answer. Obviously. 

There was no all-knowing voice, no turtle, no It, and Richie was actually wishing for that one, if you can believe it. He was wishing for anything, but it was just him and Criss. Just him and his feeble attempts to gain the upper hand. 

But guys like Criss… they’re big kids, they play on sports teams, they _dominate_ on sports teams. They weigh like two-fifty, and Richie’s, like, not even close to that soaking wet?

 _It’s so fleeting,_ It-Eddie had said at the kitchen table. _Time. Life._

Richie sits next to Bev, covered in mud and a mixture of vomit and water and realizes It was right. Time is fleeting. Life is fleeting. Richie hadn’t had enough of it. 

He realizes he’s shaking. 

Bev envelopes him in a hug, misinterpreting the reason. “Easy,” she soothes. “Relax. _Breathe._ You were just a fish.” 

“Fish can breathe underwater,” Richie snaps. “Where’s Stan? Where’s Eddie?”

Bev blinks. Falters, like the name _Eddie_ is new to her, like she hadn’t _seen_ him, and that has Richie’s stomach churning again. “Stan was right—he went after Belch. He’s…” 

Richie stands up, ignoring the wobbling of his legs, the sudden dizziness that consumes him, and looks around. He can’t see. He can’t see. He can’t fucking _see._

Eddie has medical tape in his fanny pack and Richie can’t find him and Richie can’t see. 

He squints, _really_ squints, like he used to when he was embarrassed of the glasses, of how big and bulky they were, and sees—well, he sees enough.

Ben’s sitting up, elbows in the dirt, shirt pulled over his stomach. Mike’s above him, one sleeve of his flannel ripped off and wrapped around the bloody mess of Ben’s skin. There are bikes. He counts them—one, two, three—and one is leaning as if it’d been crashed right into a tree. The front wheel looks wonky, the angle of the handlebar twisted in a way he’s not sure they can fix. It looks like Stan’s. It _is_ Stan’s, with the carefully-placed band stickers on it. 

But Stan is not here, not near them. 

Neither is Eddie. 

“Stan?” Bev yells. Her voice echoes. “ _Stan?_ Mike, where’s—“ 

Mike waves his hands at Ben, face contorting. “I don’t _know,_ Bev,” he answers. “I’m… Ben is… Stan was _just…_ ” 

If Mike finishes his babbling, Richie doesn’t know. Everything fades out, then back in. Bev’s voice. Mike’s non-answers. The rush of water. His own heartbeat. “No, no, no, no, _no,_ ” he mumbles, covering his ears, then his eyes, then his mouth. He can’t lose them. He can’t lose either of them. He can’t lose them _both._

And then…

_And then—_

It’s like angels fucking singing. Nirvana. Like… like every good sound in the world on one continuous loop, and it’s not even that great of a sound, what he hears, it’s…

It’s Eddie’s most irritating shriek. 

“ _STAN, STAN, STAN, LET GO OF THE BAT, YOU ARE GOING TO KILL HIM—_ “

And then it’s Stan’s yell, a bit judgmental, because that’s just how he sounds, and one hundred percent over it. 

“— _SO? HE WAS GOING TO KILL YOU—_ “

“ _—THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU SHOULD STOOP TO HIS LEVEL, STAN, STOP—_ “

“ _Eddie,_ ” Stan says. 

“Give me the bat,” Eddie orders.

“Eddie,” Stan repeats. “Wait. _Eddie._ ”

There’s a pause, one which drops Richie’s elation to minor pleasure. “Stan,” Eddie says slowly, “what are you…?” 

And it’s not that Richie doesn’t trust Stan, he does, but he saw the way Ben reacted this morning. How he didn’t believe it the way Richie did, how he needed proof and touch, and Stan… Stan is Richie’s best friend. He will not let Richie be tricked again, not like he was this morning. Stan will make _sure_ this is the real Eddie Kaspbrak, born November 20, 1976. 

Richie just doesn’t know what that entails. When provoked, Stan is a wild animal. 

He grabs his glasses from Bev’s hands and scrambles in their direction. They’re farther than he anticipated, their voices making it seem like they were a few trees over, and there’s a stitch in his side he ignores. Another in his head, to add to the seventeen already there. He should be dead by now, he thinks. He should be really fucking dead. 

He bursts into the clearing, gets a thorn stuck in the meat of his palm, and finds Eddie and Stan, perfectly fine, if not incredibly wet, standing by… _is that the immobile body of Belch Huggins?_ A bloody baseball bat lies between them. 

Richie holds a lens up to his eye, sees that Stan’s jaw is clenched. He’s got that crazed look on his face, like he’s going to maybe murder Eddie in cold blood right here and now.

And Richie, on the low, thinks he will. He’s seen that look. He’s watched Stan _act_ on that look—dry, cutting remarks that turn into such scathing, smart, offensive insults that fly over peoples’ heads. One time he punched a guy so hard in the face he broke his nose. The sound echoed. Richie doesn’t even remember why he did it, just that it was super cool. ( _For you._ )

Eddie stares back at him, eyes wide. 

Stan’s hand goes into a fist at his side. His shoulders slump. The part of his face Richie can see scrunches up, like he’s fighting something, and then he’s moving.

Richie takes a step forward with no real course of action. Will he tackle his best friend for his… for his other… for Eddie? Will he push Eddie out of the way and take it himself? What will he do? What is his _plan?_

But Stan merely lifts Eddie off the ground, something that would result in a lot of whining, of which does not occur. Eddie wraps his arms around him, squeezes back, squeezes _tight._

Stan says something Richie’s ears aren’t privy to. Eddie says something back. The magic will tell Richie what it is if he wants to know, but Richie lets them have their moment. He allows them the privacy, the ability to feel, something the two of them often don’t, and politely ignores the fact that they’re both crying. 

Here’s the thing, yeah? Bill was Eddie’s best friend. He was the guy Eddie went to with his problems, with his secrets. He idolized him, treated him like the older brother Bill needed to be and Eddie wanted to have. But Stan… Stan _understood_ Eddie, his nuances, his nitpicks. The reasons he did things. Why he liked the things he liked. He knows and loves Eddie the same way he knows and loves Richie. 

Stan is kind of perfect, Richie realizes, looking at them. Stan is _very_ perfect. 

And then there’s another realization: Eddie didn’t cry when he saw _him._ He hit him with a _bat._ In the _temple._ He knocked him _unconscious._

But then: He made out with him in the bathroom. 

Twice.

He’ll allow it.

What he won’t allow is his presence to go unnoticed. “Crying without me?” he calls, leaning against a trunk and misjudging the distance, _fuck_ these broken glasses. “Lame.”

Stan sighs and Richie loves the sound of exasperation. He doesn’t let go of Eddie, just twists on his heel, and says dryly, “I cry with you every Saturday at nine PM.” 

Eddie laughs and Richie loves that too. He loves everything about right now—his fatigue, the ache in his bones, the fact that he was drowned, that he’s almost died on _three_ separate occasions, and the wild look on Eddie’s face. In the set of Stan’s jaw. His _people._ His friends. Bev, and Ben, and Mike back there, too, back where they belong. Where they are _whole._ The only thing missing is Bill and for the first time in what feels like forever, Richie _wants_ him around. He wonders when he’ll get there, when the losers will unite, capital- _L._

The smile on Eddie’s face seems to match Richie’s, even if he can’t see it. He has a bloody nose and a bruise forming dark and ugly on the right side of his jaw. Red coats the corners of his mouth, like he bit down on his tongue, or it dripped from his nostril that way; it smears across the lower half of his face like the black tar, the black gunk, of all of Richie’s nightmares. His stomach churns at the sight before logic gets in the way.

Red, not black.

 _Life,_ Richie, not _Death._

Eddie unzips his pack and rifles through it for the tissues, rips the plastic opening wider, and all but shoves a rolled up wad of paper up his nose. He looks stupid. (Richie loves him.)

Stan rolls his eyes and pats down his coat pockets, finding a zipper high up near his heart and hands over a packet of wet wipes. He indicates to his own face, grimacing. (Richie loves him, too.) “Glad to see you aren’t dead,” he says once Eddie’s started to clean off his chin. “Had me worried I’d have no one to do my chemistry homework.” 

“Wow, Stan.” Richie deadpans. “I was worried you had a heart for a second.” 

“Nope,” Stan replies cheerfully, “I’m afraid I’m a mere tin man, waiting for Dorothy to lead me to the Emerald City.” 

“ _The Wizard of Oz,_ ” Eddie comments unnecessarily. He sounds stuffy, which he is, Richie guesses. “Is it off my face, Stan?”

“Not even a little,” Stan answers. “Gimme that. The two of you are like literal toddlers.”

“I can’t _see,_ ” Eddie complains. 

“Ooh, twins, me either!” Richie exclaims. “Can you throw over the medical tape, Eds? Criss got my glasses real good.” 

Eddie squints at him, like _he’s_ the one with the impressive vision problems, and says, “You have a gnarly cut through your eyebrow.” 

“Another scar to add to the Saving Eddie Kaspbrak collection.” Richie sighs, but touches above his eye and wonders why Bev didn’t say anything. Probably too busy trying to get his lungs working correctly.

“He’s spent all day talking like he’s the star of some animated Disney movie,” Eddie tells Stan. 

“Hate to break it to you, Eddie,” Stan begins, “but he’s always talked like that.”

“Unfortunate.” Eddie wrinkles his nose. “I’m not throwing this at you, Rich, get over here.” 

Stan smirks. “If you can manage it.” 

“I managed just fine finding Eddie,” Richie retorts, sniffing. He trips over a branch he didn’t see, but keeps himself upright, ignoring Stan’s unconcealed snigger. “You know, after I was _abandoned_ and _left to die_ by my _best friend._ ”

“I didn’t abandon you or leave you to die,” Stan repeats on the breath of a sigh. “I just kept going, which you _also_ should have done, but I never should’ve expected you to do what is best for you. And _anyway,_ if I had stayed with you, we probably would’ve never found Eddie. And look: _Eddie!_ ” He wipes off the last of the blood, gentle around Eddie’s bruise. “Sorry you were right under our noses and we could never figure it out.” 

“It’s okay.” Eddie looks back at him, that same gentle touch in Stan’s fingers held in his gaze, and he smiles, turning as Richie approaches, slow and tentative. It’s like he’s just gained control of his legs. “Richie came eventually.” 

“Four years too late,” Richie grumbles, taking the medical tape and beginning the embarrassing task of putting his glasses back together. Jesus. It’s like he’s thirteen again—maybe eleven—getting a fist to the face for running his mouth and not his feet. It’s a blessed feeling, being this stupid. 

But right here: The blessed feeling is warmth. Is comfort. Is safety. And that’s the thing, right? You have these people that are _yours,_ that can make any place feel like home, even a dirty clearing with broken bottles and rocks and trees, that make you feel good and happy even when you’re down on your luck. Even when you have to turn yourself into a caricature of yourself, taped glasses and jokes as armor. Even when there’s a _body_ several feet over, hopefully unconscious and not dead—but debatable if Richie really cares much about that. 

“But you still came,” Eddie says.

Richie shoves his glasses on his nose, bulky between his eyes, and sees, for the first time, the odd contrast of injury and tenderness that makes up Eddie’s face. “You look stupid,” he tells him, pulling the tissue from his nose.

“So do you.” Eddie taps his bridge of his glasses, then drops his fingers to hook through Richie’s belt loop. Richie feels the hot touch of his thumb at his hip. His heart hammers there. 

Stan sighs, deep and suffering, like they’re wounding him. Like he has anything better to do with his time. “He was always going to come, Eddie.” 

“I know,” Eddie says. Smiles again, teeth white, lips red, bruise purple. “I always hoped you would.” There’s blood in his mouth, too, gathering in his gums, between the incisors.

Richie’s arm moves, reaches out to wipe it off. He catches the dirt on his thumb, on every other finger, and thinks better of it. He’s a mess. His skin is under the grime somewhere, he bets, but he can’t find it. “You have blood in your teeth,” he tells him. He points to his own mouth. “Right here.” 

Eddie’s tongue (pink, Richie knows what it tastes like, fuck) runs over his teeth excruciatingly slow, digging between each one, then goes over his lower lip. He smiles again. “Gone?” 

“Sort of,” Richie answers, dazed. He can still see it in the middle, like Eddie didn’t try that hard. “Can I have a—?”

Stan waves a tissue in his face, says, “This is embarrassing, Richie.”

“I am a complete embarrassment,” he agrees and he ducks his head to get a closer look at the stubborn bits of blood that have clung to the grooves of Eddie’s teeth. He scrubs them off. He thinks about kissing him, there at the corner of his mouth, but pinches his cheek instead. “Clean as a cucumber!”

“The expression is _cool_ as a cucumber,” Stan drawls. 

“Are cucumbers cool?” 

“When they’re in the fridge, yes.” 

“But when they’re just chilling? Hanging out? Are they the kind of vegetable you want to sit with in the cafeteria? Do they get invited to all the parties? Are they popular in the crisper?”

Stan blinks at him, waits a breath, blinks again, waits _another_ breath, blinks _again,_ and finally asks, “Are you done?” 

Richie thinks about it. “Yeah, pretty much.” 

“Good, that was awful,” Stan tells him, “and we should really head back to the others.” 

“We’re just going to leave him here?” Eddie asks, kicking Belch’s sneaker. “I thought it was funny, Rich.” 

“You would,” Stan mutters, but his mouth twitches. “And, uh, yeah? He’s not my friend, and Criss and the other one just—this is a classic case of being abandoned and left for dead, Rich. Take notes.” 

Richie mimes flipping open a notebook and scribbles into it. 

“Hate that,” Stan says. “What would we even do with him, Eddie? He’s massive. I’m not going to drag him around town.”

“I don’t know,” Eddie says. “Just seems… he’s just… _look at…_ you know what? I don’t know. I don’t care. Gimme that bat.”

Stan picks it up, weighs it in his hand, and tosses it over. “Pretty useful of you to be carrying this thing around.” 

Eddie shrugs, mouth twisting into the sort of smirk that makes Richie’s toes tingle ( _an odd reaction_ ) and mostly reminds himself of the little shit he’d been in the summer of 1989. “Someone’s gotta protect Richie from the werewolves.” He pulls at his sleeve, covers his hand, and wipes at the wood of the bat. The dirt and the blood remain.

Eddie gives up almost too quickly and swings it experimentally. Richie _feels_ it in his head, how hard that swing can be. He’s going to have migraines for years.

“And the not-werewolves,” Stan says slowly, bending down to gather a sparse handful of leaves. He sprinkles them on Criss’s head almost like he’s decorating a dessert and they’re, like… chocolate shavings or some shit. “That should do it, right?” 

“Oh, you bet,” Richie answers, stepping back. He covers one eye with his hand, squints with the other. “Don’t even know who that is. Can’t tell. Is that our history teacher?”

Eddie snorts. Coughs. “Shut up. That does literally nothing. I _know_ who that is and if he _dies_ —“ 

“—it’ll be your fault, for having a baseball bat—“

“—no, it’ll be _your_ fault for beating him over the head with it like a deranged monkey—“

“—self-defense—“

“— _I_ was—“

“—saving your life—“

“— _Eddie!_ ” Mike yells, interrupting the most adorable argument Richie has ever had the pleasure of witnessing. He wonders what Eddie was going to say before Stan started annoying him, probably the cutest tirade about physical health, and ethics… _ooh,_ and _morals._ God, Richie feels excited just thinking about it, all tingly down his spine; he should get that checked out, for sure. “We need that fanny pack pronto!”

Eddie grins—at him, at the world, at the sound of Mike’s voice. “It feels good to be needed,” he tells Richie and Stan.

Richie fights down the urge to kiss him ( _again_ ), pinch his cheek ( _also again_ ), and slaps his butt ( _which is somehow a better alternative?_ ). “Go get ‘em, Doc.” 

Eddie shoots him a look and pushes himself to his tiptoes. For one brief, terrorizing second, Richie thinks Eddie’s gone _fuck it_ and he really _is_ going to get a kiss, but he just presses the pads of his fingers to Richie’s cheek instead. He scampers off, shouting at Mike about _blood flow_ and _germs_ and _are your hands clean?_ to which Mike responds _obviously fucking not!_

He’s gone a whole of two seconds before Stan’s at his side, throwing an arm around his shoulders, propriety be damned, and pulling him close. “Fuck subtlety, I guess.” 

“No time for it,” Richie admits, leaning over to kiss Stan’s cheek. “Glad you’re not dead, asshole.” 

“You too,” Stan replies. “Never had any doubt though.” 

“Yeah, you did.” 

“Mmmm, nnnnn—“ Stan gives up on words, kissing him back, a short, hard peck at Richie’s temple. It feels like more of a punishment than an affectionate gesture, but Richie leans into it. “Maybe a little. Just a bit. A tiny bit. Like…” He shows Richie the space between his thumb and index finger, minuscule. “This much. Tiny, like I said.” 

Richie laughs and knocks the fingers further apart. “More like this much, touStan.” He laughs. “Get it? Toucan? Tou _Stan?_ Eddie came up with it.” 

“My misery has no end,” Stan laments, and Richie wraps his arms around him tight, squeezing him until he’s certain he’ll pop.

* * *

4

Eddie already has his hands full before he’s even clear of Richie and Stan. He wears the roll of medical tape like a ring on his thumb and maybe half the gauze wrapped through his fingers like the mummy Ben saw in his mirror only last night, ready for use if need be. He has a fanny pack full of other things, supplies: a bottle of antiseptic, packs of tissues, bandaids, bandages, sticky and not, tweezers, Tylenol, the allergy medication. Richie shoved his candy in there, a handful of tokens from the arcade, and a coupon for half-off lanes at the bowling alley they had on display at the ice cream shop. The thing weighs down on his hips, heavy but not a nuisance. Eddie likes the weight. Likes the implications. 

He hears Richie laugh behind him, then Stan follows shortly. The sound of it warms him from the toes up, a swirl of friendship. Belonging. He loves it here, even if it’s a part of the Barrens he never wants to come back to again. Even if he has a headache from lack of oxygen to the brain, head held under the crash of the Kenduskeag by Belch’s meaty hands. He doesn’t stop to think about what would happen if Stan hadn’t shown up when he did. 

“Eddie!” Bev calls when she sees him. No, correction: Bev _shouts_ when she sees him. She’s a running blur of red hair, pale skin, and a funky-colored shirt, almost similar to the shit Richie was almost constantly wearing but somehow better, and then she’s leaping. Physically _off_ the ground. Around him. All but knocking him to the floor, her limbs gangly and freckly and long. _Tight_ around his body.

He drops the tape and the gauze between them, catching her, hugging her back, rocking backwards, and feels her sniff into his neck. “Eddie,” she says again, quieter. “ _Hi._ ”

“Hi, Bev,” he replies, smiling at her when she pulls her face back. Her eyes are bright. Wet, almost. “How are you?”

“I’m good,” she says. “How are—I missed you.” 

Eddie doesn’t remember much of these people, of his friends. Much of his memory comes in a slow, steady flow, filling in cracks he was only idly aware of having back in his house. He’s got a lot of Richie at this point, but not all, and he is surprised how much of Stan he remembers. It is flashes, like it was with Richie, just slower, not hitting him all at once like a truck, like a tidal wave. 

Sitting stationary on their bikes, watching Richie and Bill do something stupid, sharing whatever snack Eddie snatched from his cabinet… Staring at each other from different classrooms across the hall, making exaggerated facial expressions until one of them breaks… Judging Richie wildly but silently egging him on, always amused in his antics… Using the Uris house as a cover for everything and anything, Andrea and Stan taking one for the team any time Eddie's mom called, saying he was there even if he wasn’t… 

And something with Bev, something hits him too. He says, “I missed you too,” even though it shouldn’t feel right, even though it technically should be a lie. 

But he did. He _missed_ her. 

Bev was… Bev _is_ the coolest girl Eddie knows. One he’d go to war for, who he _has_ gone to war for. He cleaned her bathroom, and she danced with him in the clubhouse, and he was her friend, and she tried to talk some sense into his mom. 

He remembers piling into a bean bag with her—not the hammock, that was his place with Richie—listening to the entire Whitney Houston album on a loop, no one else to call them radio hogs in sight. She’d flipped through a magazine, read him his horoscope, had him take a quiz to find out what kind of boyfriend he was, and Eddie silently took her hand and told her a secret. 

She told him one back, circling a denim skirt paired with black suspenders with a red pen. _My dad hits me sometimes._ It wasn’t much of a secret; they’d all seen her bruises, some hidden more carefully than others. But it was not something she ever _said._

Eddie always found that nice, that she trusted him, and he tacked on a bit more. It wasn’t anything he had any proof of, but—“Sometimes I don’t take my medicine and I feel fine. I think she uses it to control me.” 

“She can’t control you, Eddie,” Bev said back, squeezing his hand. “She can only make you scared, and I don’t think I’ve ever really seen you scared. You’re the bravest person I know.” 

“You think?”

“I know. Do you think I’d look good in this hat?” 

Eddie leaned his chin on her shoulder, settled in more comfortably. “I think you’d look good in anything.”

He wonders if they remember this at the same time; Bev smiles at him, sad and small. “I tried to get her to open that goddamn door.” 

“She does what she thinks is best.”

“All parents do,” Bev says. “But it doesn’t mean they’re right.” 

“First she tries to kiss me and now it’s Eddie!” Richie’s voice comes loud and teasing from the left. “God, Marsh, pick one of us already, _jeez._ ”

“I’m going to bash his face in,” Bev says pleasantly. 

“Oh, does it have to—I’m kind of partial to the face.”

Bev’s smile turns amused, knowing. He may have told her that too, that day in the clubhouse. She’s a good secret-keeper. “I’m going to kick him in the balls,” she amends. “He’ll recover.”

“Works for me,” Eddie says. “I have to fix Ben.” 

“Right. Yeah.” Bev jumps off him and bends to pick up the things he dropped. “I can… I can clean this. In the water. I’ll be right back.”

“Oh, you d…” Eddie starts, then stops once he realizes she’s moving much too fast. “She’s going to kick you,” he tells Richie when he invades his personal space. He squints up at him through the sunlight. “You want Neosporin for your eyebrow cut?”

Of Bev, Richie says, “Typical.” 

Of his cut, he says, “Maybe later. You have a Ben to patch up. Again.”

Of Eddie, he says, “Cutie.” 

This time, he leans down and steals that kiss Eddie thought he’d get three times over earlier, a quick thing to his forehead. Not the ideal placement, since Eddie’s kind of got a thing for, y’know, kisses on his _mouth,_ but.

“Gag,” Stan says, passing them by. 

“Jealous,” Richie calls. 

“Of your trashmouth? Sure,” Stan replies. “I love not knowing where it’s been or if it’s clean or what shit is about to come out of it.” 

“It’s clean,” Eddie and Richie say at the same time. 

“ _Gag,_ ” Stan repeats. 

“Kinky,” Bev corrects. 

“Annoying,” Eddie decides. He leaves Richie’s side, ignores Stan, who is going to great lengths to look disgusted, and bends down next to Ben. “Hey, bud.” He instantly hates that. Is he a guy who says _bud?_ Judging by the look on Ben’s face, it’s a resounding no.

“We’ve really got to stop meeting like this,” Ben jokes. “You’re gonna start thinking things about me.” 

“That you’re just as carvable as a Thanksgiving turkey?” Richie suggests. “That’s a thing we’ve always known.”

“I will finish what Criss started,” Bev threatens. 

“You’d miss me. Who else will skip study hall with you?”

“Fine. You’re right.” Bev flicks him hard in the ear. “And it’s not because I like you or anything. You’ve got good weed. That’s all.” 

“Well, it’s not _mine—_ “

“—I need _silence,_ ” Eddie snaps. The sounds of their voices are making it hard for him to concentrate, and he doesn’t want to stress Ben out anymore than he already is. 

The rip of his skin is not… it’s not great, okay, and Eddie’s mom always complains that his face is an open book. Eddie tries to school his expression into some kind of neutrality, but Ben is Ben is _Ben,_ and he sees through it. 

“Bad?”

Eddie swallows. “Could be better.”

The wound is the same, if you look at it critically. It’s on his stomach, carved there. Letters. One complete and the other just started. It’s like Ben wasn’t drowned like the rest of them but rather just… it’s like he was held down forcibly—there are bruises on his arms—and Eddie and Richie were shoved underwater, and someone continued the carving Henry never finished back at the bridge. It’s coarse, ragged, done with something other than a knife. A rock, maybe. There are dozens of them around. 

The lines of the cut are red. They smell kind of rancid, like the infection there is speeding up, accelerating at a pace that would be alarming to Eddie had he not seen it happen to Richie’s shoulder. Eddie bites his lip, falling back, and tries to figure out what to do, how to fix it. This looks nothing like the marks Richie bears, deep but noticeable, easy to mend. There’s something more maleficent here, something evil; it’s apparent in the pull, the rip, of the skin. An _H_ turned to an _I,_ turned to a _T._

Despite both being from the same being, Eddie knows a little DIY, a home remedy, are not the solution. 

He douses a tissue in antiseptic again, wiping around the thing, careful not to touch where he shouldn’t. The cuts are deep, the blood is gushing, moving steadily, and Eddie is not generally a queasy person. You can’t be when you’re the group doctor, but… _but._

Bev drops beside him, offering up the gauze and tape. She takes one look at Ben’s stomach, turns her sharp gaze to Eddie’s cheek. She says his name, Eddie’s, and he knows she knows. It’s bad. It’s—they used to avoid going to the hospital because they couldn’t explain anything they were doing. They relied on Eddie because adults, _doctors_ with their medical records and family histories and contact information… that was a no-go. A nonstarter. 

This is, though—this is hospital-worthy. 

All Eddie can do is clean it, bandage it, and try to convince them they can work the hospital staff, but he won’t be going in. They can’t see him. They can’t call his mom. He’s convinced she’s got four of the receptionists on speed dial. 

“Hold his hand,” he tells Bev. 

She does, slipping her fingers through Ben’s and smiling at him, and Eddie continues to clean. He winces when Ben does, pulls his tweezers out to pluck tiny things of dirt and rock out of his stomach, and uses a clean tissue to sop up the blood. 

Bev is talking to Ben quietly and he is all but enraptured. Eddie remembers something else from 1989 then, his hand a steady weight near Ben’s belly button. Ben liked Bev. Had a massive crush on her. He thought he was hiding it, but Eddie saw it. He isn’t sure if anyone else did, as consumed with Bill as they always were, but Eddie had also been consumed with Richie, so maybe he just saw what he knew. 

Now he’s grateful that hasn’t changed, that Ben still likes her, whatever it means to them four years later, and wonders what he should do. 

There’s nothing he _can_ do. 

There’s only… 

He licks his lips. Turns his head. Snaps, as quietly as he can, “ _Richie._ ”

Richie has his head close to Stan’s, whispering or fighting or sharing a secret or whatever, whatever, _whatever,_ but he hears him. He turns to follow Eddie’s voice, his whisper, and meets his gaze. 

Eddie does not allow himself to feel anything other than the panic in his belly, the thought that he can’t _fix_ something, even though he doesn’t think he’ll ever get over the heat of Richie’s staring. The heat of knowing. 

Richie tilts his head like the cat earlier, questioning. Confused. Stan looks from one face to the other. 

“I _can’t,_ ” Eddie says. He stops. He doesn’t want to say the rest out loud. 

The first time he’s needed, the first time he can help, and he can’t. Fuck. He’s pointless. Has he always been pointless? 

Richie blinks. 

Stan curses. 

Their actions seem so loud, but only Eddie hears them. Ben is focused on Bev, and Mike is focused on them, standing over them, ever the guardian. 

_I can’t,_ Eddie thinks. 

He bites his tongue and cleans again, the blood flowing fast. He can pull the skin apart and see how deep it is, how dirty the inside has gotten. He doesn’t know what to do. He needs— _fuck,_ he needs his mom. 

He will always need his mom. That’s what it comes down to. Not even four hours out of his house, away from her, and he needs to crawl the fuck back, asking for help.

 _No, you don’t,_ a voice says. He wonders if he’s said that out loud, if Richie has heard it and he’s there to pull him from the ledge. _We can fix it. You can heal it._ But it is not Richie’s voice. He’s never sounded like this. 

Eddie flicks his gaze from Ben’s stomach to… to anything else. He looks around. Nothing has changed. No one has moved. It feels like hours have passed since he’s spoken, but Stan and Richie still look at him the same. Ben and Bev still hold hands. Mike still stands guard. 

Eddie thinks, _Okay. What do I do?_

 _Hands,_ the voice says. 

He drops the tissue, frees his fingers. Cracks his knuckles. 

_One over the other,_ he’s told. _Cover the wound._

Blood squelches beneath Eddie’s palms, darkening between his fingers. It is both wet and warm and cold and sticky. The feeling is unpleasant but he keeps his hands there and waits for further instruction. 

_Think this,_ the voice guides. A sort of music fills Eddie’s head; it’s a melody he knows but does not, one he’s heard but feels like he hasn’t. It fills him up, swirling and golden in his belly. He focuses on one and only verse, the one that makes the most sense, and the words all but appear before him, spelled out in cursive. 

_Heal what has been hurt,_

_heal what has been hurt,_

_heal what has been hurt._

Beside him, Bev gasps. 

In front of him, Ben twitches. 

Above him, Mike lets out an incredulous breath. 

Beneath his hands, the bleeding begins to slow. It’s a fast thing, something Ben feels aggressively, face twisted and lip clutched between his teeth. His face reddens, cheeks a bright color compared to the rest of him, and Eddie grits his own teeth, tries to ignore the tremors in his forearms, his wrists. Tries to ignore how _pained_ Ben looks, different from before. 

But the way Ben flinches, the intake of Bev’s breath, the song of a bird above—it makes Eddie lose the rhythm. The song. He sniffs, tries to find it, the words, the gold thread of them. 

Nothing. 

His hands feel like mere hands, and Ben’s stomach feels like the stomach it is, not the blank canvas it had been. 

Eddie clenches his fingers, makes them look like little claws, and searches for the feeling. It’s not there. He can’t find it and the voice is gone. 

Bev has a vice-like grip on his shoulder, nails somehow digging through his jacket, his shirt, his skin. He wriggles a bit to dislodge her, but she clamps on harder. Her voice is loud in his ear as she asks, “What _is_ that? What’s _happening?_ ”

“He’s healing him,” Mike says, knowledgeable. He’d always known so much. “It’s magic. Let go of him, Bev. He needs all the focus he can get.” 

“Oh.” Bev gently pries her fingers from him, unlatches from his side, and scrambles back on her palms. She takes the _magic_ answer in stride, like it’s a normal response, like they’re doing basic arithmetic. 

With her absence, Eddie is able to feel again, though not so much as before. It tingles in his fingertips, at his temples. It’s there, but it’s not enough; he takes a deep breath and searches, digging deep into his belly to look for the source. The music. The voice. The…

It’s a turtle.

He didn’t know that, but somehow it makes sense. 

When he closes his eyes, he sees it, swimming above him, his own body somehow moved from land to water, solid at the bottom of the sea. The river? A lake? Wherever he is, the turtle swims above him, peaceful and serene, flapping its feet. Eddie can see its shell from here, a pretty shade of green. No, of teal. Of turquoise. Of… squares of bright colors, different and stunning and unnatural on a turtle. It looks down at him, dipping its head into the water and craning its neck. _Hi, Eddie._

 _Hi,_ Eddie says. (Thinks?) _It’s good to see you again._ He doesn’t know why he says it. He’s never met this turtle—or any turtle. Ever. Not once. He’s never seen a single one, and yet… he knows this turtle. Knows it the same way he knows himself, knows Bill, knows Richie. It’s a friend.

 _That’s true, Eddie,_ the turtle says, like it can hear his thoughts. (Can it?) It kicks its legs, treads water. Blinks those large, all-knowing eyes. Dives down, down, down until it is nose to nose with Eddie, who has just realized what it means to be underwater, though it is not a big worry to him. He can breathe somehow. _You and I, we are friends. I am here for you, as I’ve always been. I sent Beverly to you in that house. Created the hole for you to fall through. Broke your arm, and again, and again, and again, when your fragile state made you vulnerable for an attack. I have protected you as I have protected your friends. As I have protected_ (here the turtle seems to smile, mouth widening. Can turtles smile?) _Richie._

Eddie doesn’t know how to respond. How does one answer anything a turtle says? He just presses his hands tighter to Ben’s stomach, who is also underwater with them. Can he breathe? Eddie looks for a sign, the rise and fall of his chest. His eyes are closed. 

_Okay,_ Eddie finally says. _Thank you._ It seems like the polite thing to do. _Can you help me protect Ben now?_

 _Yes._ The turtle spins around, moves closer to Ben’s face. Presses against Eddie’s hands. _The song is a melody you know. It is part of the mixtape, the song after the last, though not written on the song list. Richie did not put it there. I did, so you would not forget, not when these people are so important. Do you hear it?_

**_(heal what has been hurt, change the Fates’ design, save what has been lost, bring back what once was mine)_ **

Eddie has heard this. He does know it. To him, it has always sounded like a b-side. Has always sounded like the tiny fragment of something for people who listen to the very end of a long, long outro. Fifteen seconds of something an artist liked but couldn’t elaborate on, fixed to the end of a popular song so someone else would hear it too. Would feel it too. 

Eddie lets it wash over him. Nods. Focuses on the words. On what they mean, what they can _do._

His fingers tingle. His hands go numb. Ben’s wound, underwater as they are, glows. His skin pulls together, much like Richie’s had as Eddie stitched it, piece by piece. Agonizing. Slow. There is no needle pinching and pulling, just the strength of Eddie’s will, the determination in his palms. He watches, amazed, as the thing goes from one extreme to the other.

 _There is something else,_ the truth says. _Eddie. Are you listening? Do you hear me?_

 _I am trying._ It is hard to focus on both—on the turtle’s voice and the magic flowing through his fingertips. It is one or the other, and quite frankly, he is more concerned about Ben. 

_It is your mother._ The words seem to reverberate. They expand. They shout at him even as the turtle is calm. _She knows._

Eddie’s hand slips, digs into what remains of Ben’s long, deep cuts. He feels Ben exhale as he hears it. Winces with him and extracts his fingers. They are red, but he is not worried. The wound is all but patched up. _Knows what?_ he asks. 

_That you’ve left._ The turtle swims away without a second glance or another thought. _She is coming back, Eddie._

It startles him, the idea of Sonia returning to Derry. There hasn’t been enough time. He’s hardly _done_ anything. His friends… and the discussion… they haven’t… _no._

He lets go of Ben, flaps his arms, and tries to follow the turtle to the surface. He finds out then that he’s weighted, almost like a rock, and he can’t swim. He knows how to, but he can’t do it, not here. He remains where he is. Stagnant. Stationary. He will not evolve. He will not move past this. He is not allowed, but please. _Please._

 _What can I do?_ he begs, shouting up. _How can I keep her from taking me away again? I can’t do it. I won’t._

 _Do what you have to,_ he is advised. The turtle is almost gone, a mere spot near the surface, ready to break through. Break free. _What you need to. It is what you were born to do, Eddie._

_What is it? What was I born to do?_

The sun shines too bright. The turtle disappears into nothingness. _You were made for destruction, but first… save your friend._

Eddie has about eighteen more questions, but the turtle is gone. All there is is sunlight, bright and dangerous. Eddie blinks into it, back into reality, and falls into three things. 

One: There is a shitton of blood on his fingers, sticking beneath his nails. Ben’s wound is not as healed as it was in his vision.

Two: Richie’s legs are at his back, his shoes at his tailbone and his knees pressing against the knobs of his spine.

Three: Bev says, “I don’t think it’s working. Why isn’t it working? What’s wrong with it? Eddie?” 

Richie’s body shifts, legs folding around him. “Eddie?” he asks softly, a whisper of a breath. Mike warns him not to get too close, not to break Eddie from his trance, but Richie ignores him. “Eddie, what’s the matter?” 

“Shhh. I’m concentrating.” Eddie leans back into Richie, like maybe that will help, and maybe it will. Richie found Eddie through magic; maybe they are connected through that because he Wished for him. Maybe he can help. Maybe the magic makes them stronger. Maybe he’s right when he says they’re better together. Maybe… 

“I know what he’s doing,” a new voice says. A bike skids to a stop nearby. Eddie does not look up, does not break the new focus he’s found. “I think I can help. Georgie, can you—?”

The focus is gone, dissipated. Dissolved.

Eddie’s neck snaps up so hard and so fast it hurts. So hard and so fast the back of his head hits Richie in the chin. He recognizes that voice, the one that’s just spoken. It sends his heart into his throat, beating quick enough that it makes him nauseous, but it’s the name that really makes him sick. It’s… that’s… he’s… “ _Georgie?_ ” 

Georgie is dead, isn’t he?

But no. There he is, in all his glory. He is taller than Eddie remembers. Older, too. He looks as he did, though, just different, and he holds his arm oddly, like he is not in control of it. Eddie can see that he’d lost it once, in the past, because he had. That much is obvious. He can also see where it’s been stitched together—not once, not twice, but multiple times, like he can’t seem to keep it on his body. Even from a distance Eddie can smell it, the magic. It coats Georgie the same way it sticks to Richie’s shoulder and is beginning to coat Ben’s stomach. It bleeds into Eddie’s own skin, too.

But there is something else to it. There is another smell, one Eddie is incredibly familiar with; he’s smelled it in the medications he takes, the hugs he weasels out of, the creams he smears on his aching, broken arm. It is something he can place but does not want to, something that clung to Bowers and Belch. Something that remains on the end of that baseball bat, coated in blood. It is not easy to clean off. 

“Eddie?” Georgie calls back. “Eddie, is that… I thought I would never… the last time I saw you…”

“It was dark,” Eddie replies. “There was nothing. We were floating.” 

“What?” Bev asks, crawling over. “The last time you saw Georgie, you were—it was 1988.” 

Eddie blinks away from Georgie, feels Richie shift behind him, sitting. His back presses against his chest, two fingers pressing to his hip. Eddie flinches as if ticklish but settles into it and looks at Bev, her cheeks a nervous, ruddy red. “No,” he says to her. He feels Richie stiffen, hears Mike whisper something to Stan, sees her frown. Ben just focuses on breathing. “It wasn’t.” 

“What the _fuck_ does that mean?” Richie asks.

Eddie’s hands tighten against Ben’s stomach in response; he doesn’t know, actually, just that—just that he saw Georgie a bunch before he stopped seeing him at all, in those dreams. The dark ones, with the balloon and the scuttling, dragging sound. Eddie and Georgie, floating, standing, _being_ near each other, aware of the other but with no ability to communicate. To talk. And then one day… one day Georgie was gone and a hole opened up in the dark place, vacuuming up the space he occupied as if to make Eddie forget. But he didn’t. Georgie had somehow left his mark, and whenever Eddie found himself back in those slimy, all-encompassing nightmares, he’d look for him. He’d walk in circles, and circles, and _circles,_ trying to find where he went. 

Evidently, he came here, which— _what?_ Isn’t he… he _was,_ wasn’t he? 

( _Dead._ )

( _Yes._ )

Georgie sniffs, his cheeks paling where the sun hits him. He looks ghostly, skin paper thin, different from Bowers but somehow the same. He’s… is it rude to think he’s barely holding it together? Perhaps. But he is. Is Eddie the only one who sees it?

“Yeah,” he says finally. “Glad we’re not there. Are you trying to heal Ben’s stomach?”

Eddie nods, the blunt way in which Georgie mentions the magic of this town, of this action, a bit startling. He hasn’t thought too much about it, what it all means, the golden tendrils he sees, the way wounds are healing with time, with his touch. He stretches out his fingers, stuck in his claw-like position, tries to crack them out.

“I know what to do,” Georgie says. “Make room for me, Richie, if you’re going to be in the way.” 

“That is no way to talk to your elders, kid,” Richie shoots back, moving maybe an infinitesimal bit to the left, like that makes any difference.

Georgie, bless him, does not deign him with a response, and pushes at Richie’s shoulder instead. He makes a space where he can reach Eddie, any part of him, and Eddie stares past him, though not in the same way he stared at Richie, unconscious in his lap, _amazed,_ but similarly. 

There is only one person left apart from them. There are seven near the riverbed, but not the seven they used to be, and Eddie looks at the person that should be here, that is _there,_ but not. 

Something about Richie’s presence must’ve unlocked some floodgate inside him. Memories assault him, even as he should be focusing on Ben, on Georgie. They play out before him: kindergarten, sandboxes, a time when Eddie’s dad was still around. A simpler time. A time when they were just starting to learn to ride bikes, training wheels clipped to the back. There were trips to the zoo, animals so big they were scary, but being with him, it hadn’t seemed so frightening. 

_I’m B-b-b-bill. What’s your nuh-nuh-name?_

Zach Denbrough knelt down to Eddie’s level to tell him about Bill’s little accident and that he talks a little differently now. _It takes him a while,_ he said. 

Eddie said, _That’s okay. I can wait._ To Bill: _My name is Eddie._ He sat there, a sack lunch with his name written on it (an _E_ he did all by himself!) and a superhero backpack at his feet, and did exactly that.

 _Eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh—_ Bill blushed, angry and red, frustrated. His eyes were bright and prickling with tears at the corners, but Eddie just smiled, letting him sound it out. _Eh-eh-eddie. Eddie. Nice to meet you. Do you want to puh-puh-play?_

And there he is, Bill Denbrough: one second next to Georgie and the next behind him. He literally just _stands there,_ does nothing, with these dark bags beneath his eyes, nestled in a fur-lined denim jacket and a rust-colored sweater. He’s wearing a hat—black, dark gray, maybe. He and Mike always seem to match styles, either intentionally or not. Eddie doesn’t know why he knows that. 

But there he is, one hand gripping the closest handle of his bike, keeping it upright. He grips the strap of his backpack with the other.

He looks at Eddie, and looks at Eddie, and _looks at Eddie,_ hair drying at his forehead, winter coat torn and tied around his waist, fanny pack spilling with medical supplies. Eddie is literally balls fucking deep in a medical procedure he knows nothing about but somehow thinks he can pull off. His ears are heavy. Full. A cut on his cheek tingles. 

He looks away as Georgie starts explaining the song, listens to him hum, both of their hands over Ben’s worrisome, gaping wound. 

Back in the distance, Bill remembers. 

He remembers it all, that first day and that last, and all that came in between. All the times he felt like he’d forgotten something but wasn’t sure what it was. All the times he went to turn to tell someone something to find out neither Mike or Bev cared for it. _Maybe,_ he thinks, _Richie would’ve known, had their relationship stayed intact. Had they both not blamed each other for something he hardly remembered._

But he remembers it now, all the things that happened, that led up to this point, and Bill—

Bill _cries,_ loud, heaving sobs that rattle the chest. 

* * *

5

There are two large teenaged boys loitering by the _Welcome to Derry!_ sign as Sonia Kaspbrak’s sensible car crosses town lines. She presses her foot to the brake slowly, stopping near it. They do not look like nice boys, friendly boys, and they are injured, as these kinds of youths often are. 

One of them is bleeding from a cut to the ear. The other looks like he may have lost a tooth. They are hooligans, she decides. Miscreants. The type of boy she wants desperately to keep away from her Eddie-bear. The sorts of things they must get into! The _dirt_ they could get on him!

She ought to keep moving. Go back to her house and see her son, sitting in his bed and doing his homework. She does not. 

Another emerges, wet and panting, angry and embarrassed. He clutches a knife in his hand so tightly the sides of it make tiny, red indentations in the skin. When he smiles at his friends, it is evil and slimy, though Sonia Kaspbrak does not see that. She sees a mischievous, rule-breaking boy, no worse than the lot she’s spent keeping from Eddie. There is no one here who is clean, pure, _worth_ Eddie’s company. 

“Mrs. Kaspbrak,” Henry Bowers greets, for that’s who it is, “a pleasure, as always.” 

“Is it?” Sonia asks, lifting her nose. Has she _met_ this boy? No matter. He smells unpleasant, of sulphur and dampness, discharge. He reeks. “You haven’t been playing in that quarry, have you?”

“Heavens no,” Henry replies. “I was raised better than that, ma’am, and I believe you meant to raise Edward the same, but… he does like getting awfully dirty, doesn’t he? He pushed me into that river, I’ll have you know! Unprovoked!”

“Edward? _My…_ ” Sonia breaks off, remembers the radio show she listened to. _Richie Tozier’s All Dead Rock Show! Do you know where your son is?_ “He was out here? Near this… near the…” She scoffs. It’s the Kissing Bridge, that dull slab of wood teenagers seem to think is magical.

Patrick Hockstetter nods solemnly and digs a bit of his own tooth out of his gums with his tongue. He spits it out before them. “We saw ‘em, Criss and I,” he says, elbowing the round boy. “Farther out. By the sewer opening.”

“ _Them?_ ” Sonia repeats. “Eddie-bear was with others?” 

“Oh, yeah, _big time,_ Mrs. K,” Criss answers. “The whole pack of ‘em, ‘cept Denbrough. Must’ve gotten the memo to steer clear. Smart of ‘im, if nothing else.” 

Sonia would clutch her pearls if she had any; she settles on grasping a handful of her hair instead, ruining the hard work done this morning. “The whole pack of them… that Tozier boy was there.” It is a statement, not a question.

“Yes, ma’am,” Henry replies. “He sure was. They looked real cozy, if you catch my drift. Flowers in their hair, holdin’ hands… I know you worry about _Eddie-bear’s_ health, and Dick Tozier just isn’t—he’s not the _cleanest,_ you know? And Eddie looks so good right now, so healthy, so big. You’re takin’ real good care of him the way you are, Mrs. K. I’d hate for all of that to go to waste because of some friends of his. Are they even his friends if they want him unhealthy?” 

He widens his eyes, big and puppy dog-like, and Sonia does not see the maniacal gleam in them, or the glimmer of meanness. The evil. She sees a worried boy, despite the dirt and the way he speaks, and she has no reason to suspect any different. Eddie’s never told her anything about Henry Bowers, or how he treated him, how he treats _people._ She knows everyone in town steers clear of him, and they should; he’s the son of a respected police officer (may he rest in peace), leagues above the rest. Above Richard Tozier, that’s for sure. 

“The way he’s goin’,” Henry continues, “he may end up like his father, you know? Rest his soul. And I’d just hate for that to happen, and we really tried to stop ‘em, we really, truly did, but he hit me with a baseball bat and sent me over the bridge! I coulda gotten a concussion, Mrs. K, _or worse._ ” 

“And they beat us with rocks,” Patrick adds. He’s tall and gangly; with a bit more food in him and a mouthful of braces, he could be a real looker. Sonia’s convinced of this. He’s got that real, Hollywood-type to him, just needs to be a bit cleaner. “We were just tryna tell ‘em to stay away from the sewer. Water overflow. Germs. Who knows what happens there? I think I got a cracked tooth for my trouble. My jaw hurts real bad.” 

Criss nods and winces, holding his hand to his ear. “Can hardly hear,” he shouts. He’s built like a linebacker on one of those NFL teams, big, stocky, muscled. He’s got to be two-hundred, two-fifty. He could tackle mountains. “And the quarry ain’t safe, not like it used to be. I mean, it never was, but at least there were officers patrollin’ and there wasn’t much debris. No one cares for the planet anymore, Mrs. K. We just wanted to make sure they were bein’ careful. There’s a storm comin’, you know, and the river overflows real bad when that happens, but…” He shrugs. “They don’t take kindly to worry, I s’pose. That girl of theirs got me real good.” 

_That girl,_ Sonia thinks. So there’s Richie, a menace, and Beverly Marsh, a slut, and who knows who else? Eddie used to run around with a bunch of terrible kids. Stanley Uris, no doubt, if Richie is there, Jewish and with a mouth that runs no matter who he’s speaking to. Michael Hanlon, too—he was part of the group, tainting the purity of her Eddie-bear. And that fat boy, Ben, who had no worry for his own health, let alone Eddie’s. Her boy was with _them?_ After he said he’d stay home? Her boy is a _liar?_

Henry twitches, holding the back of his neck. Patrick palms his jaw. Criss presses his fingers to his ear.

“What else did they say?” Sonia asks them. “Did they mention what they were planning to do to my son?” 

“We don’t know much,” Henry says. “They were all meetin’ at the Barrens. I didn’t overhear anything, the plan wasn’t in action when they met up with me, and I couldn’t hear over the stream…”

“We heard it,” Patrick says. “But we sure do hurt, and I don’t want to do anything more to my jaw, you understand. I’d tell you, but…”

Criss blinks, shakes his head almost hazily, and pulls his fingers from his ear. The tips are stained red. “You say something? I can’t hear too well outta this ear.” 

“Oh, where are my manners?” Sonia asks, narrowing her eyes at them. The poor kids, truly banged up because of that ragtag group Eddie liked to pal around with. “Here, let me take you to the hospital, see if we can get those wounds looked at, and you can tell me everything you heard.”

Henry grins. “We sure would like that, Mrs. K. That’s awfully kind of you.” 

“Yeah,” Criss agrees. “The kindest. My ma would hate it if I came home like this.”

“Well, just don’t get any blood on the upholstery. That’s the hardest to clean out.” Sonia unlocks her car doors, and they clamor in, all three of them smushed together in the backseat. 

She makes a beeline for the hospital, the route memorized from weeks of taking her husband back and forth, of dragging Eddie to miscellaneous appointments. Henry Bowers sits in the middle, his friends at his sides, and in the rear view mirror, his face transforms into that of Pennywise’s, mouth red, drooling, and excited. Sonia does not see it, honking at a car that cuts her off at the four corners of Main Street. 


	8. it's a scary world out there

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I wished for Eddie, yup, I did that. He is here because I am _relentless._ You are welcome,” Richie babbles. He takes his glasses off, already taped together like he’s some fucking nerd in a fifties sitcom, and holds them loosely so they don’t get destroyed any further. “But while wishing for Eddie, I believe I also wished for It, so, um. You’re not so welcome. Sorry, actually. I feel really bad about it, but not too bad because Eddie is here because of it, so that actually makes me feel worse. Does that make sense?”
> 
> The silence that falls over all of them is probably the most uncomfortable thing Richie has ever had to experience and Bowers once flushed his head in a toilet. He can feel how disappointed they all are, and as per usual Big Bill’s disappointment is the worst thing to face head-on, like he’s their fucking _dad_ or something. 
> 
> “No,” Bill says carefully. “It’s not. Do you feel good or bad? It’s not clear.”
> 
>  _Oh my god,_ Richie thinks wildly, _Bill Denbrough is parenting me._
> 
> “I feel bad that I feel good about it,” Richie answers. “I do not want It to be here but I want Eddie to, so. Yeah. I am sorry but also I am not.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *stefon voice* this chapter has EVERYTHING: losers! open communication! very confusing conversations despite that! georgie as, like, an all-knowing wizard because he was *finger guns* dead once! richie and eddie kissing! memory unlock: barrens! blushing! feelings! canon-typical language and violence! evil/abusive parenting! slurs that i didn't like using! a cliffhanger (sort of)!
> 
> as always this is about 7k longer than it has any right to be, and a lot of stuff comes at ya hot and fast because i WILL make this chapter count. you've got your fair share of richie pov, eddie pov, and georgie pov to spice it up with a cameo from our main man, big bill.

1

It’s—

It’s something _else,_ seeing the magic work. 

For Richie, it’d been slow. He hadn’t even felt it, had just been aware that he didn’t need the stitches. That he could take them out. He feels it now, too, a tingling in his shoulder. It’s kind of like when the novocaine at the dentist starts to fade, his mouth on the precipice of numb and functioning. 

But seeing it.

_Seeing it…_

Richie feels his body do a number of things. He convulses, almost, torn between backing away from such—from _power,_ too great for him to understand, to fathom—and moving forward, closer. But he can’t get nearer, not unless he can somehow figure out how to inhabit the same body as Eddie, and he won’t leave him, not after he’s felt the tense line of his spine. 

Eddie sighs like he feels him, like Richie’s presence is somehow helping, which makes no logical sense; Richie isn’t _helpful,_ not really. He’s… he gets in the way, says the wrong thing, has never made an impact on anything, and yet… 

His shoulders slump, just a bit, and his back curves, and Richie scoots closer, fits his body behind him like he can pluck the strain out of Eddie’s every nerve ending. He doesn’t know why he does it, his hand reaching out, sliding down Eddie’s to his elbow, where he squeezes, and then to his wrist. 

His palm jolts as if he’s been electrified and he wants to pull back, skin buzzing, _smarting,_ but Eddie goes, “Oh.” 

He says, _Oh._

Richie’s hand stills. Stays. He feels something tunnel through him, shoulder to fingertips, and he slips his fingers through Eddie’s. Holds him, even as it overpowers him. Overwhelms him.

He grits his teeth, ignoring the way they seem to vibrate, uncomfortable and grating. Gold threads of light burst against Ben, bright and strong, all but weaving through the deep, bloody lines of his stomach. Richie watches them with bated breath, confused and overwhelmed and a little bit… a little—is _satisfied_ the right word? He feels fulfilled, almost, but also terrified. There is a buzzing running through his veins, humming beneath the surface, calling out to whatever’s in Eddie’s fingertips. It calls out to him, meets him, and when they’re connected, all of Richie’s insecurities and his worries and his doubts—his _anxiety,_ the shit that makes his head spin and his thoughts collide—they disappear.

He’s just Richie, and Eddie is just Eddie, and the tendrils of magic that burst from the two of them… they remind him of who they used to be, four years ago, on the cusp of something bigger, something greater. They’re just… they’re Richie and Eddie, and Richie has loved him his entire fucking life, since they were seven years old and Richie thought he was _too clean_ for recess, for art class. 

But the thing he’s never forgotten: Richie and Eddie have always been part of seven, but together they’ve been able to do so much. Together they can ( _will_ ) save the world. 

“Hi,” Eddie murmurs, the ghost of a breath. 

“You feelin’ good?” Richie asks. 

Eddie swallows; Richie feels it almost like he’s done it. “Yeah,” he says. “Better now that you’re here, though.”

“Nice Disney prince line,” Richie whispers, and it’s such an interesting thing to say, as he feels like he’s living in a fucking fairytale right now. 

Ben’s stomach stitches back together. Georgie’s fingers push the torn pieces of skin into each other, urging them closed, keeping them in line for the magic’s strength. Georgie all but shudders as a tremor of golden light runs down Ben’s stomach and stays there, glimmering and changing—yellow, orange, red, and, finally, an inexplicable blue, bright and harsh and _blinding._

Someone behind them shuffles back, like they’re afraid it’s going to explode. Bev inhales sharply but true to form does not move, not even an inch. She shifts closer, grips Ben’s hand tighter, and smiles at him, though a bit tremulously. 

Ben’s face grows pale, a light sheen of sweat covering his forehead and cheeks. He shines in the bright sunlight. 

“Bill, stop crying and help me,” Georgie snaps.

“M’not—“

“You are,” Stan says. “It’s okay. No judgement here. I’d expect nothing less from someone who just saw their best friend again after four years of forgetting him.” He pauses, almost thoughtfully, and adds, “Can’t relate, though.”

Richie chokes on a snort. 

“I’m not… I’m…” Bill shuffles closer, too close almost, and hits his foot against Richie’s. He backs up, startled, and then drops to Georgie’s side. “What do you need me to do?” he asks, wiping his eyes with the heel of his palm. 

He listens as Georgie explains, but his eyes never leave the side of Eddie’s face, where they are glued to his profile, to the line of his jaw. Richie stares at him, unashamed, unabashed, and is once again overwhelmed by how fucking _easy_ it is for Bill to just—to _be._ Exist without shame, or fear of judgment, or even an ounce of worry. He wears his emotions on his sleeves, in the set of his mouth, the jut of his chin. And it’s not uncomfortable, not for him, and no one has ever called him out on it (not anyone that matters, you know. Bowers and the rest, Greta and her dumb clique, they think they matter, but they don’t, not really, and though their opinions sting, what they say isn’t shit). 

Bill looks like Richie’s felt for the past, like— _fuck,_ it hasn’t even been a full-ass day yet, Jesus _fucking_ Christ—and it makes something flip in Richie’s stomach. Makes him wonder just how alike they’ve been this whole time, how empty and lost and sad, maybe. But Richie holds grudges and Bill punched him in the face when they were thirteen and made them go into a house no one wanted to be at and just like that everything Richie thought he knew, thought he had, was _gone,_ and…

If they had talked, maybe… if he’d put aside his pettiness and his prickliness and pulled his head out of his ass… if Bill made it _easy_ to be his friend, stopped being so goddamn _perfect_ in his grief and his studies and his fucking overall _being…_

Maybe Richie would’ve known how to continue to be his friend, but weeks after the horrendous Fourth of July carnival, hours after Stan’s oath, it felt like whatever tied them together loosened. Richie’d been Bill’s friend for years, ride or die, _I got you, babe,_ blah blah _blah,_ and yet it took less than one hundred days—half a summer—to just… not. It was easy. So fucking easy. They started school again and Richie felt physical fucking _pain_ in his chest every time he passed by that locker that used to be Eddie’s, and Bill was in all sorts of different classes than him, separated by time blocks and differing courseloads and honors tracks and, like, _art classes._ Richie just turned around one day and Bill wasn’t there, but Stan was, and Ben was, and Bev fluctuated between them all, and time passed more or less just like that. 

Losers didn’t even stick together, it seemed. Mutual trauma and near-death experiences do not a friendship make. 

But Richie looks at him now, at the emotion on his face. The way his cheeks are tacky and wet, and the furrow of his brow, and the collection of words and phrases and sentences building up in the shine of his eyes. 

He wonders how he could have ever stopped, how he could go from spending every possible moment with this guy to spending no time at all to the point where even his _mom,_ who very rarely noticed anything Richie did unless it confused or upset her, asked about Bill’s absence. It’s hard to explain the entire group dynamic and the shit that happened to them that one summer without being sent immediately to the loony bin, so Richie merely said, _He’s been busy. His sketches are in the art show._

It seems, though, that the magic is not just piecing Ben back together (and they should really teach him how to stop getting stabbed, probably, like that’s a recurring problem for him, which is _wild_ ). It’s soothing the wounds they’d created within themselves, to each other, and closing the rift between friendships that were supposed to last forever. 

It takes the same amount of time as healing Ben’s stomach does. With Bill’s hands over Georgie’s and Richie’s clutching Eddie’s, the magic is secured between them, powerful and contained in the one area it needs to be in. 

No scar remains, just smooth, pink skin. Ben deflates, color floods into his cheeks, making him look alive, and Richie feels as he looks. Relief surges through his bloodstream. His anxiety lessens and the tiny buildup of rage and sadness and heartbreak crashes into the dam he’d built to hide it, breaking the walls and receding. 

Richie looks at Ben, who is blushing profusely at his close proximity to Bev. Looks at Mike, who has that face on—the one with all the questions and several answers. Looks at Stan, who lingers close to him, a hand on Richie’s shoulder ( _when did that get there?_ ). Looks at Eddie, who lets go of Ben like he’s been burned and tries to tamp down the irrational, painful beat of his heart. 

Bev leans forward to brush Ben’s hair from his forehead. Ben has about enough energy to ask, “Is anyone going to explain _that_ to me?”

“You’ve studied every inch of this place,” Stan says. “Surely you know what that is.”

Ben opens an eye. “Of course I _know_ what that is. I just… it’s one thing to read it and an entirely different one to see it.”

“Magic here is not inherently evil,” Georgie tells him. He rolls his wrist, winces like he’s landed on it funny. Richie does not think he’s ever heard him say _inherent_ before; he’s ten. “It’s just the way it manifests. Hatred is particularly strong. Stronger than everything else. It’s easier to hate than it is to allow yourself to do anything else freely.”

“Dude,” Stan says. 

Georgie shrugs. “I was dead for a while,” he explains, and isn’t that just the weirdest shit Richie’s heard anyone say out loud so casually? “There wasn’t much to do except, like, reflect.”

“And you reflected on the dichotomy of good and evil?”

“Well, no,” says Georgie. “I spent a lot of time thinking about love. What’s a dichotomy?”

“A contrast between two things that are entirely different,” Mike answers gently. 

“Oh. Then yeah. I thought about that,” Georgie decides. “This town is full of people who really hate everyone else. Like, it was built on it, but sometimes the only thing that ever cut through all the noise was—“

“Love,” Bev finishes softly. She pushes back onto her haunches. “It’s what made the group, isn’t it? How we always managed to love each other even when the rest of the world could find several reasons not to?”

“There’s bad magic and there’s good magic,” Georgie says. “The good kind is always hiding. Waiting, I think. The bad kind is always triumphant, but it’s not always…” He pauses, shrugs, unable to find the word he wants, and goes silent. 

Richie thinks he knows what he’s trying to say. There are few and far places in Derry that are good—there’s the bridge, which listens to even the quietest desires of the heart, if only you knew how to share them; the arcade; the Barrens, or the parts of it the Losers took as their own. There’s the fingers curled at his shoulder and the weight between his legs, a knee digging into his thigh. There’s the heat beside him, on either side, and the body laying flat on the ground. There’s the figure standing above them all, a safe harbor, a lighthouse. There’s Georgie, too, even if Richie doesn’t know how to factor him in just yet. 

“Hatred can’t be _that_ strong,” Ben says dubiously. Of course Ben would say that; he believes in shit like _true love’s kiss,_ but then again, maybe Richie does too. 

He loosens his grip on Eddie’s wrist, which jumps at the lack of contact, and holds his hand instead, threading their fingers together. If anyone notices, they don’t say a thing, and Eddie’s heartbeat triples beneath his thumb before it calms entirely. 

“It isn’t,” Mike agrees. “At least, it’s not stronger than Bill’s love for Georgie, or Richie’s—uh—“

“Yeah,” Richie says. “That’s stronger than that. And the fear.”

Eddie leans his head back to look at him. “What are you scared of?” Eddie asks him. He hears it like he’s in a wind tunnel. A vortex. He had a dream once he got sucked into a vacuum cleaner and everything was louder than he was; it feels like that. 

“Loads of things,” he answers honestly. _You. How I feel about you, particularly. What that means to you, to me, to everyone else. That I’ll fall asleep and wake up on my bathroom floor and this will have been my brain’s attempt to protect itself from literal fucking combustion._ “Not clowns, though. I was never afraid of clowns.”

“Pretty sure I’m afraid of clowns,” Stan says. 

“You’re afraid of everything.”

“Am not.” 

“Are too. You’re afraid of the _Blob—_ “

“I’m afraid of the mess that thing makes, there’s a difference,” Stan retorts snootily. “I don’t wanna be the one who cleans up after it. Can you imagine?”

“Ew,” Eddie says. 

Richie tunes them out now, the group dynamic somehow fitting back into place, and turns his head to look at Bill, only to find him already looking his way. His mouth is kind of dry when he forms the words to greet him. “Hi, Bill.”

“Hi, Rich.”

“I’m sorry,” they both say at the same time. Richie’s cheeks burn, not very good with sincerity or, like, owning up to his actions, but it seems like the right thing to do, apologizing. He’s got years of it to do, years of explanations, years of—Stan knows, just how sad and defeated he’d been, cracked down the middle. Stan’s the only one he ever bothered trying to explain it to, and sitting there now, all of them around him, piecing him back together, he can’t remember why he thought no one else would understand. 

Of course they would. They’re losers. They’re family. They’re _his,_ no matter what he does. 

“ _You’re_ sorry?” Bill blurts back with an incredulous laugh. “For _what?_ ”

“For being a shit friend,” Richie answers back immediately. _For not even being your friend_ is what he should say. 

“You weren’t a shit friend,” Bill says, coughing. “I was. I never… you always…” He blinks, eyes closing for a fraction longer than necessary, and opens them back up to look past him. “Eddie.” The name sounds foreign on his tongue; he wrinkles his nose like he can’t work it out, like _Eddie_ is something he’s never had to say. Richie can’t understand it—he’s always had Eddie in the back of his mind, on the tip of his tongue, embedded in his heart. “I can’t believe I just forgot you.” 

Eddie turns his head, hair brushing against Richie’s nose, overwhelming his senses with how clean, how _citrusy_ it smells. He refrains from burying his face in it, refrains from holding him tight and never letting him go. “It’s okay,” Eddie says. “I forgot you, too.”

Ben pushes himself on his elbows, peering at the rest of them. “You didn’t forget Richie.” 

It’s not a question, but Eddie answers it anyway. “No. I didn’t.”

Bev smiles, lips curving in a way that makes her look deadlier than a viper. “Is that _so,_ Eddie?” 

“Oh, wipe that look off your face,” Richie grumbles. “It’s not like you remembered him.” 

“Well…” Bev begins, the word slow and drawn-out. Her bright eyes move to fixate on Eddie, softening just enough, and she reaches her free hand—the other still wrapped up in Ben—to brush against his cheek. “I don’t think I ever really forgot.”

Eddie wrinkles his nose, his body tensing, but lets Bev touch him like this anyway. Richie runs a finger down the stiff line of the back of his neck, thumb pressing against the knob at the base. “What’s that mean?” he asks for Eddie, feeling the question boiling up inside of him. 

“I have these dreams,” Bev says, pulling away. “Like, once a month, I guess, where I—okay, it’s not remembering, not really, it’s more like… like reliving.”

“Reliving?” Mike repeats. “What are you reliving?” 

Bev’s mouth quirks sadly, her eyes continuing to roam the planes of Eddie’s face until she moves on to the next boy, and the next boy, and the next, settling her gaze on Bill. “That summer where we all became friends.”

“What’s the significance of it being once a month?” Bill asks at the same time Stan goes, “So you knew Eddie this whole time?” 

“No,” Bev says to Stan. “The dreams are, like—I knew who all of you were, and I knew we were doing something together, and that I was supposed to be there with all of you, but I didn’t know _what_ we were doing or _why_ we fit together so well. I just knew something was missing.” She looks back at Eddie. “I knew you were missing. I just didn’t know it was you.” 

To Bill, she answers: “I think it has something to do with blood.”

He blinks rapidly, first confused and then aware, and Richie swallows back a snicker at the gargling, choked sort of sound he makes once he pieces it together. 

“Because of your bathroom?” Eddie asks. He’s loosened some, slumping against Richie, and he taps his fingers against his knee. Even though the material of his jeans Richie can feel him. 

Well, he can feel a lot of things; he’s still buzzing, hyper aware of the brightness of the sun and the chill of the ground beneath him. His heart races like it’s being powered by something other than his own body, something else, something otherworldly, coursing through his veins. 

“Maybe,” says Bev. “Maybe I have this, like… this weird relationship with blood, I don’t know. I never really—I’ve always—” She breaks off, color flooding high on her cheekbones, and Richie remembers a conversation they’d had years ago, where she admitted she had a tough time embracing her femininity, and womanhood, and whatever all of _that_ meant. He does not mention it now. “Whatever it is, I didn’t remember you, or any of it, until last night. The dreams were so vivid. I woke up, like, sweating. I was _nauseous._ I was so—”

“—afraid,” Ben finishes for her. 

She swallows. “Did something happen to you, too?”

Ben pulls his shirt down, ripped ragged at the hem, and fumbles into his jacket, zipping it up. “Yeah,” he says. “I, um. There was—no, _I_ was a mummy? And then I was a clown?”

“In a dream?” Stan asks. 

“In my bathroom mirror.” Ben fiddles with the sleeve of his coat, caked with mud, and picks it off with a thumbnail. “I wiped away the steam from the glass and it was all there. It even said some stuff that, like, I don’t believe anymore but I used to? And it made me so angry that I… I punched it, right, to get it to go away? And there was blood and glass and shit everywhere, but when I blinked, it was as if it never happened except for this.” He shows them his fist, knuckles scraped and bruised, tiny cuts in his skin. It is not something that could’ve happened here, in the Barrens. 

“What kind of stuff was it saying?”

“Oh, you know,” Ben answers, a forced lightness to his tone, “the usual.”

Richie winces, already knowing this from Ben’s confession earlier. The usual insults, the usual gripes, the usual manipulations It used on children all over town. _Aren’t we friends? Come play! I miss you! No one loves you like I do…_

Stan sniffs, gaze darting to Richie and then back. Richie feels it even if he doesn’t see it—there’s no judgement there, not like there will be from the rest of them when he finally tells them why this is happening, but the worry is strong beneath the heat of it. He remembers what It-Eddie said to them ( _I missed you!_ ) and what came as a result of both Richie and Stan rejecting It. His shoulder no longer screams in pain, but Richie remembers the tear of the muscle there, the way it felt like he was being consumed from the inside out. He wonders if he’ll ever forget. 

“I’ve been getting visits from this big orange bird—”

“—it does not exist,” Stan says immediately. 

“No, no, it doesn’t,” Mike agrees. “It doesn’t do anything but watch me, though, like it wants to make sure I’m still here.” 

“When you say it’s orange,” Bill starts off, each word picked with a careful deliberation they are all intimately familiar with, “do you mean the whole bird is orange or just the pom-poms?” 

“The pom-poms.” 

“Birds don’t have pom-poms,” Stan snaps. “They are not cheerleaders.” 

“No, yeah, they’re not,” Bill says. “I think it’s been following me around, too. For a while, like maybe six or seven months. There’s just always been, I don’t know, someone watching me. I never thought anything of it. Derry’s always been a little weird, you know?” 

“It’s the meanest place on earth,” Georgie says, finally sounding, y’know, _ten._ “I heard Mom and Dad talking about it one of those times they were really paying attention to the news, when they found Derek in the sewer.” Here, he freezes minutely, like he’s remembering something, but it’s gone in a flash. Richie frowns. “They said Derry is the, like, crime capital of New England but no one ever notices.” 

“It’s hard to notice when you don’t care,” Richie says. “Adults just don’t seem to see things the way they are. Like, I bet if someone stopped when Ben was getting carved like a pumpkin they’d think he and Bowers were doing the fucking waltz.”

“I can’t even waltz,” Ben says. 

“It’s like they’re under some kind of trance,” Eddie adds. “When I threw up blood, my mom didn’t even see it.”

Bev’s eyes flash with concern. “You threw up _blood?_ Why?”

“Because a balloon got lodged in my chest,” says Eddie clinically. “I had to get it out somehow.”

“Excu—I don’t think I heard that correctly,” she replies, brow furrowing. “A _what_ was _where?”_

“A balloon,” Eddie repeats. “In my chest. Here.” He puts his palm to his rib cage. “I threw it up.”

“You _threw up_ a… when did this happen? Last night?”

Eddie’s mouth, open to respond, snaps shut. He elbows Richie, and it feels kind of like an accident but it can’t be, not after a question like that. “No, the night before,” he tells them. “Something different happened last night.”

“What _did_ happen last night, Stan?” Bill asks, effectively cutting off a line of questioning that was about to make Richie start sweating. “You never said. Just _skip school and get to the Barrens._ What gives?”

Stan scratches the tip of his nose, looking poised and tall and in control, like usual. He looks at Richie again, quick, barely a second, and the moment his lips move to answer, Richie’s stomach churns, rolls, _flips._ He pushes Eddie forward into Bev, who yelps, and fucking crawls away from them to vomit up the mush of fruits and waffles he’d scarfed down that morning. 

He fears that if he looks up he’ll see something he doesn’t want to, this prickling at the back of his neck convincing him something awful and terrible and evil and murderous is just waiting to sink its teeth into him. He shifts, pressing his forehead into the ground inches from his puke, and wonders when he’ll get to be a normal person again. 

_You were never normal,_ he reminds himself—tall, gangly, too big, too much, full of voices that aren’t, and will never be, his own. 

Someone asks, _But who wants to be normal?_

 _Me,_ he thinks desperately. _Me me me._

“That happened last night,” Stan says, “but I do not normally call everyone in a frenzy when Richie throws up. I’d be calling you every hour.”

Richie tastes dirt when he answers. “I don’t throw up that often.”

“You throw up when you’re nervous,” Ben comments. Richie can picture the thoughtful look on his face, which he hates. If he didn’t love Ben he’d punch it right off, but he won’t because their bond is so deep. And he doesn’t know how to punch anyone correctly. And Bev would definitely finish him off in that fucking river if he did that in front of her. “Are you nervous?”

“Of course I am,” Richie says. The admittance of it makes his mouth feel cottony. Numb, almost. “I haven’t seen Eddie in four years and here he is. I have every right to be nervous.”

“What?”

“Are you fucking kidding? You’re _nervous_ around me?”

“That is a bald-faced fucking lie, Trashmouth, and you know it.” 

“Why would you be _nervous_ about Eddie?”

“Bill, are you blind?” Georgie asks. His voice takes on that weird tone it did earlier when he was talking about dichotomies and goodness. “He’s in love with him.”

“You’re _what?”_

Mike laughs, rich and sweet, and cold dread creeps down Richie’s spine. “Bill, man, I say this out of love, but you’re the stupidest person I’ve ever met.”

“ _Wow,”_ Stan comments. “Cold, but not untrue.”

“I… I am _not,”_ Bill retorts. “I just. He’s—? Where have I been? How do _you_ know this?”

Richie digs his face further into the ground. He thinks he understands ostriches now. 

“I had a lot of time,” Georgie says. “And it’s… you can’t see it? The way they’re connected? It’s right there. Pink.” 

Bev says, “I don’t see anything.” 

“You wouldn’t,” Georgie tells her. He is not mean about it. “But Bill can.”

“I mean… yeah, but I see that everywhere,” Bill tells him. “Ever since I went to the Kissing—oh my _god,_ holy _fuck,_ Richie, did you _Wish_ for Eddie?”

Richie presses his lips together, grits his teeth, and makes a sound that reminds him very much so of the fridge in his kitchen. Or the washing machine when it is overloaded and all the water comes spilling out of it. 

“Um, you bet,” he answers, because he’s a person who says _you bet._ “Please do not beat me up. I’ve gotten my ass kicked three times today and one of them was by Eddie.”

“Kinky,” Bev teases. “Did you like it?”

“No, I did not like getting hit in the head with a baseball bat.”

“ _This_ baseball bat?” Stan asks, sounding positively gleeful. 

“Please do not make fun of my pain.”

“He snuck into my room through the window,” Eddie adds. “What was I supposed to do?”

“Ask him if he was your long-lost best friend,” Richie grumbles, “and _not_ hit him in the face.”

“Right,” Eddie says. “Because that’s logical.”

Bill’s voice is much closer the next time he hears it. “Why would I beat you up?”

“You have a history of punching me,” Richie answers. He rolls over, wiping at his face. 

Bill stands over him, blocking the sun, and Richie squints up at him. He’s never been afraid of Bill, no matter how angry he’s gotten, but now he feels maybe a tiny bit like he’s scared of him. “It was one time,” Bill returns, rolling his eyes. 

“Mhm, yes, one time,” Richie agrees. “You got me right in the nose. Wasn’t particularly painful or anything, but it was surprising. I feel like it will hurt now if you did it.”

“I’m not going to punch you,” Bill says. 

“Do you _promise?_ ”

“I—uh, yeah, sure.”

“No, you gotta say it. Say _Richie,_ _I promise I will not punch you._ ”

Bill shoots him a look but does it anyway, if only to appease him. Richie knows for certain he will get punched regardless, but even that knowledge does not stop him from speaking. He does brace himself, however, and he finds that digging his heels into the dirt makes him feel safer. Braver. More grounded, which _ha,_ right? This is the literal ground and he’s—yeah, no. 

“I wished for Eddie, yup, I did that. He is here because I am relentless. You are _welcome,_ ” Richie babbles. He takes his glasses off, already taped together like he’s some fucking nerd in a fifties sitcom, and holds them loosely so they don’t get destroyed any further. “But while wishing for Eddie, I believe I also wished for It, so, um. You’re not so welcome. Sorry, actually. I feel really bad about it, but not too bad because Eddie is here because of it, so that actually makes me feel worse. Does that make sense?”

The silence that falls over all of them is probably the most uncomfortable thing Richie has ever had to experience and Bowers once flushed his head in a toilet. He can feel how disappointed they all are, and as per usual Big Bill’s disappointment is the worst thing to face head-on, like he’s their fucking _dad_ or something. 

“No,” Bill says carefully. “It’s not. Do you feel good or bad? It’s not clear.”

 _Oh my god,_ Richie thinks wildly, _Bill Denbrough is parenting me._

“I feel bad that I feel good about it,” Richie answers. “I do not want It to be here but I want Eddie to, so. Yeah. I am sorry but also I am not.”

Bill blinks—or Richie thinks he blinks. He can’t exactly see. He doesn’t want to know when the punch comes, so he closes his eyes and lets the sounds of the Barrens wash over him. The wind through the trees, the stream as it flows, the remaining birds, not quite ready to migrate South yet. He thinks he hears the buzzing of bugs, but those should be dying off by now. 

“What exactly did you wish for?” Bill asks. “How did you word it?” 

“Poorly,” Richie answers. “I was sad.”

“You know you have to be specific, right?”

“Yeah.” Richie swallows. “I tried, but I don’t think it would’ve made a difference if I’d been more careful.”

“Why’s that?”

“I would’ve said the wrong thing anyway. I always do.”

“Nah.” Bill nudges his knee with his toe. “Open your eyes and take my hand, dumbass. I’m not going to punch you.”

Richie pries one eye open. “Is this a trick?”

“You’re the one that likes pranks, not me,” Bill says. “C’mon, up and at ‘em. You’re gonna walk me through all of this and we’re going to come up with a plan.”

“Really?” Richie slides his glasses up his nose and grabs Bill’s hand, letting him pull him up.

“Obviously.” Bill is not taller than Richie, not by a long shot, but he makes Richie feel tiny in comparison when he reaches up to mess with his hair. “You went into that house with me the first time.”

“I didn’t want to,” Richie says quietly. 

“And I don’t want to now, but I will if we have to.”

Richie turns his head to look at him and what he sees makes him feel like maybe he doesn’t really know Bill. Maybe he hasn’t known him since the summer of 1989. Maybe who he is now is still who he was back then, just hidden underneath everything else, and Richie was just so angry and sad and lonely that he didn’t let himself peel the layers away to see it. 

“Really?” he asks again. His voice cracks. He ignores it. 

“Really,” Bill says, squeezing his elbow. “Losers stick together, right?”

Richie can’t get words past the lump in his throat, so he merely nods instead. _Right,_ he thinks. _It’s high time we started honoring that._

2

They lug themselves away from the stream, eager to put that stretch of time behind them, and deliberately as far away from the old clubhouse as possible. Eddie chews on one of the candy bars Richie bought, tongue bursting with nougat and chocolate, while he watches Mike fiddle with the wheel of Stan’s bike. He’s got, like, magic hands, Eddie’s convinced; he doesn’t even need any tools to take it apart and put it back together, just twists nuts and bolts with his fingers. 

And it provides a good distraction for what’s unfolding around him. 

He bites down on a—he thinks it’s a peanut, and he’s not even worried about any allergies he may have. 

(If you’re curious, he’s only ever had seasonal allergies for the better part of his life. He is not allergic to peanuts. He is not lactose intolerant. He can have glucose. He is _fine._ )

So, he bites down on a peanut, grinding it between his teeth, and tries to make the sound of it louder than the conversation. It works for a bit, every other word drowned out until—

“It’s too soon, isn’t it? The Fourth of July thing was only four years ago.”

His mouth feels like it’s two seconds away from sticking together, his tongue to the roof. His jaw all but locks, sticky nougat keeping his teeth together, and he has to use actual force to open it, afraid he’s going to somehow push them out through his gums. “What Fourth of July thing?” he asks, voice strangled. 

“You didn’t hear about it?” Ben asks. He looks better, less like he’s going to be sick, like the pain has passed. _Like it wasn’t there at all._

“No,” Eddie says. “If it was the same summer, I don’t…” He blinks, picking at his lip. “I don’t remember any of it.”

“The magic only lets you remember Richie?” Bev teases. 

Eddie takes in her sparkling grin, still somehow there despite all the talking that’s been going on for the past, he doesn’t know, ten minutes, and knows she doesn’t really mean it. Knows that it wouldn’t matter if the magic only did just _that,_ that they wouldn’t care, but it rankles. It’s upsetting that he can’t just say _yes, that’s it,_ but he has to instead tell them the truth. 

“No, I broke my arm in three places in that fucking house and it never healed correctly.” He bites a big chunk out of the Snickers bar in his hand and chews so aggressively he clanks his teeth together. His mouth is full when he talks again; he’d normally hate that and he does, really, he hates that he’s the one doing this gross thing, but. _But._ “The entire summer was foggy. The medications I was on were really strong. I probably shouldn’t have been taking them, but my mom was worried I was constantly battling some kind of infection.”

“For three months?”

“Every time I got my cast removed I broke it again.”

Richie, huddled close to Stan, face growing paler by the second, murmurs, “That was my fault probably. I should’ve listened to you when you said not to touch you.”

“No,” Eddie says. He tongues at a piece of nut stuck in his molars. “I only said that because I was afraid of you touching me. I had always been afraid of that.”

“I touched you all the time,” Richie blurts. “I was constantly touching you. I was never not—“

“Yeah.” Eddie brings his hand up, uses a nail to dig into his gums. “And that day I was afraid of how much I wanted you to touch me. I had just been mocked relentlessly by a leper and then a clown _and_ fell through a fucking hole to the ground floor and I was still… you were… how much I wanted you was the scariest part of that day.”

“I don’t know what’s worse,” Stan pipes up, shifting so Richie’s head leans more comfortably on his shoulder, “the fact that we are being terrorized by a clown _again_ or that I had to listen to that.”

“Both equally awful,” Bill agrees. 

“Shut it,” Stan retorts pleasantly. “You found out about this today. You have no right to make jokes.”

“You have to wait at least five to ten business days,” Bev adds on. “Common courtesy and all.”

Eddie’s ears burn, having forgotten how easily the rest pick at and tease each other. He’s embarrassed, but he’s not. How can he be when it’s so freeing to be able to say how he feels? How he felt? He’s spent years in a house following rules and being perfect and doing this and saying that and _yes, Mom_ and _of course, Mom_ and _Mommy, Mommy, Mommy._ He’d made sure to do everything he could to make her feel alright, comfortable, and never checked in on himself.

Was he alright?

Was he comfortable? 

No. 

No. 

But here, in damp clothes with water clogging his left ear and a deep pounding pain at the back of his head, he’s never felt better. He’s never felt more like he’s belonged. Never felt more like _himself._

So he lets their voices and their jokes and the little ways they’ve already begun to poke at him wash over him again, cocoon him in something that feels warm, like the hugs he never asked for and his mother never gave. It’s much nicer than anything he’s been in the presence of. It’s the most— _please forgive him,_ he thinks— _loved_ he’s felt in… well, in four years, honestly.

And, if he remembers, he used to be good at ignoring them when they got like this. They were the ones he could easily tune out. Stan’s snark, Bev’s mischievous giggles, the knowing glint in Ben’s eye… they were nothing compared to Richie’s attention—his teasing and his touching and his stupid fucking glasses and his mouth. Eddie could _not_ go without arguing with him, or yelling at him, or shoving him, or kicking him in the face. Anyone would think that meant Eddie didn’t want to be his friend—you don’t just attack people, right, you’re supposed to get along with them—but Eddie just… he _really_ liked him. He liked him so much he had no idea what he was doing half the time, his brain on autopilot, his body moving without so much as a single thought. All because Richie was looking at him like _that._

He’s looking at him like that right now, eyes wide, gaze all-consuming, like he’s trying to pull Eddie into his orbit with just the strength of his stare. He feels a tug somewhere in his gut, like some external force actually _is_ in control of him, and he has to bite down on his lip to remain where he is, feet away from where he wants to be. He clears his throat, calling his soul back to his body—because it is most certainly not here, wandering elsewhere, and averts his eyes so he doesn’t do something dumb like get lost in Richie’s or get the fuck up and sit in his lap.

“So, yeah,” he says. “I missed that. What happened?”

No one asks if his mom told him, probably because they already know she didn’t. If she could keep him sheltered forever, she would, and Eddie doesn’t have the strength to tell them the lengths she went to to keep him so remarkably out of the loop. _That’s_ embarrassing, not the fucking moon eyes he’s making at Richie. No one bats an eye (apart from Bill earlier) so he bets he used to do this a lot, y’know, before. 

“Um.” Bill pushes his sleeves up to his elbows. Pulls them back down. Puts all his weight on his palms and leans back, then just decides to lay flat on his back. “We had the carnival we always have.”

“Did you go?”

“No,” he says. “We… didn’t want to, I don’t think. We were going to, but…”

“We went to the movies instead,” Richie tells him. “We saw, um, I think it was _Ghostbusters,_ the second one.”

Eddie frowns. “On the Fourth of July?”

“Yeah, we definitely saw a movie instead,” Richie says, “but we were going to go to the carnival. Bev was wearing this, like, blue halter top with stars all over it. I don’t know why I remember this.”

“Because that’s a great shirt,” Bev interjects. “I don’t fit in it anymore.”

Richie fake-pouts. “Sad.”

“But, like, _why?_ ”

“Because I am no longer thirteen,” Bev answers. “People grow, Eddie.”

“It’s okay, Eds, I know you wouldn’t know anything about that,” Richie says.

Eddie blinks. “I’ve grown significantly since—no, I mean, why did you go to the movies if you were already going to the carnival?”

“We walked past the theater and Ben was all, _oh, there’s a showing of Ghostbusters in ten minutes, we should see it, everyone will probably be at the carnival,_ and the next thing I knew we were buying tickets.”

A map of Derry appears in Eddie’s mind’s eye. Today’s the first day he’s stepped foot outside of his own block, on his own, without the suffocating presence of his mother, but he remembers it all. He’d known how to get to town, how to get here, and he knows how to get to that carnival from the Barrens, which he has no doubt was where they were hanging out before they decided to head over. He maps routes there, more than one, while the others talk about the movie, remembering pieces of it and shitting on whatever _Star Trek_ film came out around the same time.

He’s about two minutes behind the conversation when he says, “You passed the movie theater on the way to Bassey Park?”

“Yeeeees,” Richie says, drawing out the vowel.

“Why?”

“Because that’s how you get to Bassey Park,” Richie responds, slow as if he is speaking to a five-year-old.

“That’s not…” Eddie trails off and kicks at the dead grass in front of him.

Mike gives the handle of Stan’s bike a quick shake; the front wheel moves along with it, to the right and then to the left. He drops the kickstand, apparently satisfied, and leans up against the seat. “What’s going on in that head of yours, Eddie?”

“That’s not the way to the park,” Eddie admits in a rush. “I mean, it is _a_ way to the park, but it adds on an unnecessary”—he stops to think, counting—“maybe seven minutes altogether, where you could just skip going through town entirely and take that really long street all the way down and turn left by the canal.”

A moment passes before Bev says, “I did think it took us a while.”

“But we never made it to the park anyway,” Ben muses, “and we had enough money for all of us to see the movie, which is always surprising. Don’t we normally have to sneak somebody in?”

“Yeah,” Stan says, “but never me. I’m an upstanding citizen.”

Richie nudges him. “You broke the gumball machine so you wouldn’t have to give it a quarter.”

“Shut the fuck up, no one knows that was me,” Stan snips.

“I _watched_ you do it.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did, I was right there.”

“Where’s your proof?”

Richie pinches his exposed wrist. “If I hit it by the part where you feed it the coins, it loosens, like, three gumballs and all you have to do is turn the thingy,” he says. “I know your secrets, Stan.”

“Hm.” Stan hums. “And I know yours, so don’t go around telling people mine or else.”

“Ooh, Stanley Uris just _or else_ ’d me!” Richie exclaims, hand over his heart. “I am _terrified._ ”

Stan turns his head, face expressionless, and says, “You should be.”

“Unfortunately you are not high on my list of things to be scared of,” Richie tells him. “If we survive this, you’ll be at the top, I promise.”

“We will,” Stan tells him, more like a promise than anything else, and Eddie feels like he’s intruding on something there, something soft between only Stan and Richie. He feels a twinge of something in his chest—jealousy, maybe, but he doesn’t think he is. Not in the way anyone would think. 

He just—he looks at them, so comfortable with each other, _knowing_ things about each other, and he realizes that ugly monster roaring inside of him _is_ jealousy. He’s jealous that they’re friends like this, that they all are, even if some of it is stilted, but Eddie is starting to get the idea that Richie exaggerated the break in the group. He does that because he’s dramatic, Eddie remembers. 

But back to the matter at hand: Eddie _is_ jealous, right? He’s jealous he’s gone so long without something like that. 

So he fixates on it—on the way the hard lines of Stan’s expression smooth out. How Richie blinks and relaxes. How touchy he is with him. How Richie is consumed by Stan, poking at the cut on his cheek and the bags under his eyes, like Stan has never looked tired a day in his life.

Eddie decides to finish his candy, not bothering with it anymore. He can’t change what’s already been done, but he can be sad about it. He hates this town and he hates the clown and he thinks he may hate his mother and he knows definitely that he hates himself for thinking that. 

“Okay, so to recap: Stan is a criminal”—Stan shouts, _I am NOT_ and Richie shushes him loudly—“and we’ve been taking the longest routes around town for what?” Mike asks. “Have we always done that? Now that I think about it, whenever I leave the farm I always avoid main roads. Doesn’t matter where I’m going.”

“Is that why you’re always late for movie night?” Bill asks. 

“And you always have bug bites,” Ben adds. “Do you go through the woods out back?”

“It’s the good magic,” Georgie supplies before Mike can answer. He twists the cap back on the water bottle Bill handed him, now half empty. “He probably led you away from whatever bad things were happening.”

“He?”

“The turtle,” Georgie says. “He protects.”

 _You were made for destruction,_ Eddie remembers. Could that fall under the umbrella of protection? The turtle seemed to know a lot and was open with sharing what he did know, but Eddie wouldn’t say he felt particularly safe when he came to talk. He felt more anxious than usual, actually, like something was on the line. Something he didn’t want to say, at least not yet. 

“A _turtle,_ ” Richie repeats on a squawk. “Bill, I always forget your brother is ten and then he says shit like that and I am reminded.”

“No,” Eddie finds himself saying, “there’s a turtle.”

Georgie cocks his head, eyes deep and wide and older than he is, appraising him. “He visited you?”

Eddie nods. “And I think you’re right, but not that he protects,” he says. “It’s more like he… he guides, and he’s guiding us away from whatever would get in the way of what he wants.”

Richie stares at him, lips parted incredulously, and Stan’s brow is so furrowed he looks more mad than curious, but Bill is bobbing his head in agreement, like he understands, like he agrees. Ben doesn’t seem surprised, but nothing surprises Ben, not anymore. Bev is a little harder to read, but he gathers she’ll believe anything since they were the only ones to see blood in her bathroom and there was no explanation for that. 

Mike is looking off into the distance, past their heads and towards the growth of trees behind them. “What does the turtle want?”

“To stop It,” Eddie says, “but he can’t do it on his own.”

“So he picked _us?_ ”

“I guess,” Eddie answers with a little shrug. “I am not the turtle god.”

“ _Turtle god,”_ Richie lets out on a quavering chortle. He pushes his glasses into his hair and shoves two knuckles into his left eye. “Stan, Stan, did you hear that? There’s a _turtle god_ who thinks we’re, like, some great heroes fully capable of defeating an ugly clown who _eats children._ I could name several people more qualified than us.”

Stan, brow pinched and jaw clenched painfully, forces out, “ _Can you?_ ”

A low whine escapes Richie’s throat. “Not right now, but probably?”

“You’re his best bet,” Georgie says solemnly. “Are you going to throw up again?”

“Yup!” Richie shoots up, staggers as far as he can, and drops to his knees. The sound of his gagging is loud and unpleasant. Stan rushes after him, grabbing the water Bill holds out wordlessly. Eddie hears Richie bleat, “ _Turtle god!_ ” before he throws up again. 

(He makes a mental note to look this vomiting thing up when this is all over. Surely there’s a way to get him to stop.)

Stan’s voice is small, quiet when it comes towards them: “There _is_ a murder clown, Rich. A turtle god isn’t so crazy.”

“Oh my _god,”_ Richie moans. Stan pats his back. 

Eddie looks away, making eye contact with Bill. “What happened at the carnival?”

“Everything was fine until it wasn’t,” Bill says. “Pieces of machinery just—broke. You know that swing ride everyone likes? My dad says one second it was up in the air and the next there were just bodies going in each direction, still strapped into those swings.” His voice goes flat. “No one survived that.” 

“There were other things too,” Mike says. “My grandpa was there at the barbecue stand he always has. They called it poor preparation or bad weather or whatever but I know it wasn’t. It was a beautiful day. My grandpa and the town are always particularly anal about shit like this so I _know_ it was fine. Nothing should have gone wrong but it did—half the tents caught up in flames.”

“The Ferris wheel wasn’t secured tight enough, just like a degree or two off its axis and it just…” Ben makes a rolling motion with his hands, going faster and faster until he slaps them together. 

Eddie bites the inside of his cheek. “How many people died?”

“Enough,” Bill answers. “The mayor made a statement that they would never hold another carnival again but naturally everyone fucking forgot come April and they planned another one. Nothing happened.”

“We forgot too,” Bev adds softly. “As much as we could before Stan made us remember.” She holds out her palm, a healed scar sliced through her skin. 

“And this was—you think it was the clown?” Eddie asks, digging his nails into his own scar. He doesn’t remember getting it, or why he did. He was most certainly not with them when they made this pact, but he’s got one all the same, and if he recalls correctly, as his mind is whirling, the moment it split open he was sent to the hospital, that white, sterile, _horrible_ place, where his mother convinced everyone he’d hurt himself on purpose, which he _wouldn’t,_ and no one bothered to listen to him. But it was also that moment that he started to remember. Not much, just bits and pieces, but it was all coming back to him. 

Bev shrugs. “It’s his MO, right? If It can’t get Its fill of kids, It makes a scene. Like with the explosion at that bar, or the time at the Ironworks for Easter, or the… the weird gang shootout. It makes people do things for It if It can’t do it Itself.”

“And to put it more plainly, there was a clown sighting at the carnival,” Mike says. “Same description as the one we saw. Handing out balloons. Doing stupid tricks.”

“And any bodies they found, survivors or anything, they were chewed through,” Bill adds. “They blamed an animal. Made a whole event shooting a bear in the square just to prove it, but we know that wasn’t it.”

Ben shudders. “That was probably my least favorite day of my entire life.”

“You mean to say you _liked_ getting stabbed by Bowers?” Richie asks, ambling over. A flush has settled high on his cheekbones, a bright contrast to the white, pallid look of the rest of his face, but his eyes twinkle behind his glasses. His mouth looks wet. “I didn’t know knife play was your thing.”

“Beep _beep,_ Richie,” Bev snaps, pointing her leg out as if to trip him. Richie makes a scene of jumping over it. 

“It’s okay,” Ben says. “He’s probably just vomited up his brain. We should cut him some slack.”

Stan takes his seat back, hands cupping his knees, pressed tightly together. “If he had a brain, I’d be hard pressed to agree, _but…”_

“Hey!” Richie exclaims. “Be careful what you say if you want me to do your science homework ever again.”

“I’m only kidding,” Stan says. “He has a brain. He just uses it selectively.”

“That I will allow,” Richie decides grandly. He pops a squat at Eddie’s side, makes a big scene of settling in, and then leans to the side, dropping his head in Eddie’s lap. “Hi, Eds.” 

“Hi.” Eddie raises his eyebrows. “I will not be happy if you throw up on me.”

“I will not.” Richie crosses his fingers over his heart. “You all caught up?”

“I don’t know. I think so.” 

“After the Fourth of July, everything calmed down,” Mike continues. “The only unusual thing was how hot the rest of the summer was and your disappearance, Eddie.” 

Eddie inhales sharply. “Probably would’ve been a shock to me too if I’d even remembered any of you,” he admits, “but any obvious evidence of you guys had gotten thrown out or whatever my mom did with it.” 

“She just—she got rid of us just like that?” Ben asks. 

“We all know she would’ve done it a lot sooner if she could,” Richie mutters. “I’m pretty sure Mrs K is the only one who _likes_ the town brainwashing.” 

“Bowers and his gang benefit from it too,” Bill says. “All the bullies do. No one fucking sees them bully us.”

“Oh, dude, did I tell you the other day when I was getting shaken down for lunch money I was _convinced_ the principal noticed for a split second?” Ben asks, leaning forward. “It almost made up for the fact that I had to wait until after track to eat.”

Bev moves so fast she is just a blur of red. “When was this? Why didn’t you ask for money? I would’ve shared.”

“Like last week, whatever,” Ben says, waving it off. “It’s nothing. They don’t bother me as much anymore.” 

Richie lifts a finger, mouth opening, and Eddie pushes it back down. “I think he knows, Rich.”

“I was just—“

“ _Shhh.”_ Eddie presses his thumb to his lower lip. Richie tries to lick it. “Learn when to speak.”

“Fine,” Richie relents, blinking up at him. “But I think he bothers him the same amount.”

Eddie taps his lip one last time and says, “Looks like it.” 

“We forgot a bit too,” Stan admits, eyeing the two of them. “I made everyone promise not to forget because I knew it wasn’t over.”

“How could you know that?” Eddie asks. 

“A gut feeling,” Stan answers. “And I don’t trust anything that doesn’t die in front of me. I’ve watched enough horror movies to know that.”

“Double tap.” Richie nods sagely. 

Stan rolls his eyes but his mouth twitches anyway. “Double tap,” he agrees. 

“That’s basically it on our end,” Mike says to Eddie. “The summer was uneventful after that. Saw a lot of movies. Went to the arcade a bunch of times. Swam here… We tried to see you the first week after you broke your arm but your mom never let us in. Richie tried the hardest and she just—“

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “I know.”

“Stan gave her a _mouthful,”_ Bev says, pleased as punch. “She called me dirty but what-fucking-ever. Being clean is overrated in my personal opinion.”

Eddie snorts. “Really?” he asks Stan. “What’d you say?”

“Nothing she didn’t already know about herself,” Stan says airily. “She just needed to be told it. Richie should be the one to talk. I think he broke into your house, like, three times.” 

Beneath the hand Eddie has resting on his cheek, Richie’s skin heats. He thinks he likes being able to feel it happen and brushes his thumb along it. “You did?” he asks. Maybe he hadn’t imagined him that one time, cuddled up with him in his bed. 

Richie scrunches up his nose. “You’ve always been my favorite Kaspbrak,” he admits softly. “You think I was gonna let Sonia win that one?”

“Well, she did,” Ben points out. “Like, she really won that one.”

“Shut up, Haystack,” Richie shoots at him, fixated on Eddie, who can’t seem to stop his racing heart, which is bursting from his fucking _eyes,_ he’s sure of it. “I forgot where the fucking house was, okay? My wishes are not perfect. We’ve already established this.”

“Speaking of wishes,” Stan starts, “care to elaborate or am I going to watch you and Eddie flirt until the clown finds us and I beg it to take me out of my misery?”

Richie pulls his gaze away from Eddie, rolling over, cheek squishing closer to Eddie’s knee. “And they say _I’m_ the dramatic one,” he complains. “Stan, you need to chill.”

“I’m sorry, but who got so worked up he threw up multiple times in my presence? Fill us in on the rest of it.”

Richie grimaces, shoulders tensing. “I don’t wanna. It’s embarrassing.”

“Everything about you is embarrassing,” Stan deadpans. “No one’s going to judge you any more than we already do.” 

Bev makes a thoughtful sound. “I might.”

“I won’t,” Eddie promises, running his fingers through Richie’s hair. It’s tangled and matted in places, so he dedicates his time to slowly brushing it out while he listens. 

“Ugh, you might.” Richie takes a deep breath, like he’s centering himself, and Eddie scratches at his scalp almost like he’s a dog. “Okay, so let’s all go back to when we were thirteen. Are you with me? Are you there? Okay. Cool. That summer was when I realized I had a very big crush on Eddie—“

“Fast forward,” Stan interrupts. “We know this. Get to the wishing.”

“Bill didn’t know!” Richie says loudly. “I am giving him _context.”_

Bill huffs a laugh. “Thanks for the concern, but we can skip this part.”

“Storytelling is an _art form—“_

“Richie, tell us the important bits, okay? I don’t want to listen to you yearn.”

“This whole thing is about me yearning!” Richie argues. “Everything I did was because I couldn't bear to forget him. I slashed both my palms, I wrote him letters—“

“—you wrote me letters?” 

Richie lets out a whine. “Yes, and I mailed them until I forgot your address. And I checked the book my mom has because contrary to popular belief I am _not_ an idiot, but it was like you’d disappeared so I ended up just hiding them in my closet instead.”

“Aw.” Bev sighs. “How cute.”

“How many did you write?” Bill asks. 

“Enough,” Richie mumbles. “Anyway, everyone was forgetting, right, and I was so scared I would too so I went to the Kissing Bridge.”

“When we were thirteen? Why’d it take so long to find him?”

“I didn’t wish for him then,” Richie says. “I went to the bridge a lot.”

Bev leans forward, chest to the ground, and supports her chin in her palm. “Oooh, how many times is a lot?”

“ _Liiiike…”_ Richie smacks his lips. “Once every six months? I don’t know. I didn’t know I was wishing for anything when I went half the time. I only actively wished twice.” 

“And you wished for what?” Ben asks. 

Eddie continues to card his fingers through Richie’s curls, Richie’s glasses digging uncomfortably into his thigh. He doesn’t mention it. It still thrills him to know someone _wished_ for him, used the magic that runs through this town for him, for Eddie. It means even more that it was _Richie,_ but now that he thinks about it, half-listening to the story, who else would do that for him? He never had the same relationship with any of the others as he did with Richie. 

“The first time it was to not forget him,” Richie answers, “since I already was. I mean, it wasn’t major or anything, but there were things I just… I really had to think about them and I didn’t like that. It scared me. But, _surprise,_ I wasn’t specific enough and I was only able to remember what he looked like and how he made me feel. If I’d asked to remember everything about him, I think I’d have found him sooner, and maybe I wouldn’t have risen the stupid clown.” 

The hush that falls over them, including a sudden halting of the soft breeze above, speaks louder than they ever could. Eddie feels some sort of agreement between them, thinks maybe Richie can’t feel it because he blames himself, but regardless of what he wished and how he wished it, the clown was always going to come back. It seemed like it never left, haunting Eddie’s dreams for as long as it did, sending him to dark, dank places where Georgie resided, keeping him locked up in his own house. They might not have had as much experience with the clown or its other various forms—and Eddie is starting to think his mother may be one of them because she wasn’t _always_ like this, and not to this extent—but Eddie knows somewhere deep, deep down, pulling at his heart, swirling in his gut, leading him somewhere he does not yet know, that the clown ( _Pennywise)_ has just been biding its time. 

Waiting. Watching. Learning. 

You do not need strength to do that, just ability. Eddie knows this as fact: he’s been doing the same thing. Watching through a window, waiting for the right time, learning things his mother would never in a million years bother to teach him. 

“And the second wish?” Stan asks, uncharacteristically soft in the wake of all the snappy jokes he’d made. 

Richie hesitates; Eddie can feel it, the way he stiffens in his lap, jaw clenching. “I…” He reaches down, holding one of Eddie’s ankles loosely in his hand like that will somehow stabilize him—or, maybe, as his fingers tighten just enough to be a bit uncomfortable, to prove Eddie’s really there. He’s been doing that a lot. “I wished we could go back to a time where we were all together. Where… where Eddie and I were… were—“

Bev blinks at them, and the action itself is unimportant, but the way she does it—she looks _sad_ almost, like there’s a part of Eddie’s four year disappearance that no one is telling him about. “Like this,” she finishes. 

“And the last time we were together, it was 1989,” Bill says. “That summer. End of June.”

“Yup,” Richie says, “so that’s where we are, I think.” 

“So… it just picked up where it left off?” Mike guesses. “The clown was never gone?”

“I’m not an expert on this,” Richie grumbles. “Ask the kid who had a lot of time to _think.”_

“It backtracked a little,” Ben says. “Henry didn’t have to slice me up again. That already happened.” 

“Maybe it was just a reminder of what he could do,” Bev suggests. “What he’s done. A way to tell us we’ve never really escaped and we’ve never really been safe.” 

“I think that’s right,” Georgie announces. “I think the wish brought everything back. All the unfinished parts. What do you know about It?”

“Not much,” Ben answers. Eddie gets a flash of his bedroom, walls covered in newspaper clippings of interesting and terrifying information; maps of old Derry and new, layered over each other; concise lists of deaths, children and adults, with the corresponding year and catastrophe. _Not much_ is a lie, coming from Ben, at least. “There’s really nothing concrete about it, since no one really _knows_ and if they do they don’t want to share, but it’s been here for a while. Almost as long as the town has. Longer probably.” 

Georgie nods, playing with his fingers. “Yeah,” he says. “It’s said It just landed here and made Itself home, eating what It could get Its hands on. It wasn’t until a while passed and more people settled here that It realized children were more appetizing.”

“Why?” Bev asks, her expression equal parts horrified and intrigued. 

“How do you know this?” Bill demands, shifting closer to him. He peers into his face, lifts his hair from his forehead, and checks him for a fever. 

Eddie wonders if he can see how pale, how translucent Georgie is. His skin is ghostly and his veins are bright against it, maps of blue where he’s pushed up the sleeves of his sweater. The bags under his eyes are deep and purple, painful to look at and probably more so to have. He looked like that, like half a person, when Eddie used to see him in his dreams. He knew who he was there, but when he woke up he’d forgotten his name and how he knew him, just that sometimes a kid he’d been familiar with visited him. He didn’t have an arm in his dreams, but he has both here. Eddie smells the magic radiating off him, sharp and tangy, and wonders what he had to do to channel that much into himself. Wonders why. 

But Georgie just smiles at his brother. “I was dead, Billy,” he reminds him. “When you die, you get to know everything.”

“You’re alive now,” Bill breathes, the words somehow louder than they ought to be, catching in his throat. “You get to keep all of it outside of death?”

Eddie’s fingers close tightly around a chunk of Richie’s hair. “Ow,” Richie hisses. “Don’t scalp me.”

He lets go to find his hand is trembling. It’s a nasty habit that he doesn’t quite like, but he cracks each of his knuckles, hoping that’ll stop it. It doesn’t. 

“I guess,” Georgie says. “Stop babying me. Do you want to hear the rest?”

“Sorry,” Bill mumbles. He doesn’t move from his side, all but glued to him. 

Georgie launches into a very in-depth explanation on the differences in fears of children and fears of adults, but Eddie cannot focus on it. The words from before circle in his brain. _I was dead, Billy. You’re alive now._

Pale. Tired. Reeking of magic. 

_Is he?_

“So you’re saying that every twenty-seven years this thing awakens to feast on children because their fears are more tangible and, like, _tasty?”_ Stan asks, wrinkling his nose. 

“Basically,” says Georgie. “It picks people and places based on town perception and how easily they’ll frighten, so with the Black Spot—“

“Racism,” Mike says firmly. 

“—and the Easter thing—“

“Little kids,” Bev whispers. “Easy to scare. Easy to manipulate.” 

“That doesn’t explain why we keep getting picked,” Richie argues. “I think we’re genuinely good people, right, like, I’m not calling Mike names or egging Stan’s house or fuckin’ _prank calling_ Bill’s house as his dead younger brother—sorry, Georgie.”

“It’s okay.” Georgie smiles at him, small and tight-lipped. Eddie tries not to analyze his face. This seems important. “But… not to be rude or anything… you were all already afraid of something before It woke. It didn’t have to try very hard to find something to scare you with, It just had to look into your minds.”

“Okay, so we’re just pathetic, nothing to see here, move along,” Richie says hurriedly, waving a hand as if to say _shoo!_

“It’s not pathetic to have fears,” Mike tells him. “It’s normal. You should embrace them.”

“Why would I _embrace_ my fears?” Richie asks. “My fears are the reason we’re here and I don’t particularly _like_ them.”

Mike sighs. “The thing about fear is if you allow yourself to acknowledge it, it can no longer control you. Fear is only natural, Richie.”

“Okay, grandpa, thanks,” Richie retorts. 

“And there’s nothing to be afraid of here, with us,” Bev reminds him gently. “Whatever you’re afraid of, it doesn’t have to be a secret from your friends.”

“It’s pointless,” Richie says. “You already know what it is. I haven’t been subtle today.”

Eddie frowns, digging his teeth into his lip. “You’re afraid of me?” That can’t be right. 

“Nope, not you,” Richie says, twisting so he can look up at him. “Of… what it means to want to be this way with you. They don’t care, of course they don’t, but everyone else in this stupid place…”

“Oh.”

“Fuck ‘em, honestly,” Stan pipes up. “ _They’re_ the pathetic ones, probably won’t make anything of themselves and all turn out like their shitty parents. _And,”_ he adds conspiratorially, like he’s got some secret to share, “I have on very good authority a bunch of those popular kids are, like, doing each other _favors,_ if you know what I mean.”

Georgie tilts his head to the side, confused. 

Eddie opens his mouth to express the same thing, but shuts it quick when he gets it. 

“ _No,”_ Bev breathes, “who?”

“It’d be easier to give you a list of who isn’t,” Stan tells her. “Half the baseball team. Probably the entire basketball team. Everyone’s a hypocrite these days.”

“I don’t understand,” Georgie says. “What are favors?”

“Nothing,” Bill answers. “We should get back on track anyway. What were you saying about—“

“Blowjobs,” Richie blurts out. “Favors mean blowjobs in this scenario, little man.”

“ _Richie,”_ Bill scolds. 

“I’m not little!”

“Everyone is little to me,” Richie says to Georgie. To Bill, he says, “He’s ten. We talked about worse at his age.”

“Okay, _yeah,_ but that’s different. Your nickname is literally Trashmouth.”

“I say what I want.” Richie shrugs. “What’s so wrong with that?”

“Everything,” answers Bill. “If you just took a second to think, you’d find yourself in a lot less—“

Eddie blurts out, “Is now really the best time for this?”

“I agree with Eddie,” Bev says. “While Bill makes a great point, worrying about Richie’s mouth is the least of my concerns. Georgie, what were you saying?”

Georgie gives both Richie and Bill a weird little look before bringing them all back to the matter at hand—the _awful_ matter at hand. This is not a group of friends skipping school to hang out together. Not a fun reunion. It’s quite literally life or death. 

“So you all had fears—I did, too, but I was so little it was easy to lure me in.” Georgie’s mouth quirks into a tiny frown. “But the turtle also thinks that makes you stronger than It. If you already know what it is you’re afraid of, you can overcome it, like Mikey said, and if you can do that, you can beat It.

“All I’m hearing is I have very little time to get over the fear I have of being murdered for liking dick,” Richie says blandly, “and if I don’t a clown will eat me because my fear is all-consuming.”

“Are you really that afraid of it though?” Eddie asks. “You held my hand all through town. So many people saw us.”

“Well, I was excited!” Richie says. “I haven’t seen you in so long. Of course I’m going to hold your hand.”

Stan snorts. “Looks like you’re getting over that all-consuming fear of yours.”

“There was hardly anyone around.”

“There were so many people in town,” Eddie rebukes. 

“The excitement overruled! It didn’t _matter,”_ Richie says fiercely, “not when I was with yo—oh.”

“Yeah, _oh,”_ Stan mimics. “Dumbass.”

“Keep it up, Staniel, and I’ll pick someone else to give all my attention to,” warns Richie. 

“Please do,” Stan replies. “Maybe I’ll finally get some sleep.” 

“We are getting off-topic again,” Mike says loudly. “This turtle thinks we can defeat It?”

Georgie nods. “He’s always been waiting for you,” he says. “The seven of you.”

“God, I love fulfilling my destiny,” Richie mutters. 

“Shh,” Eddie hisses. 

“But how?” Bev asks. “We can’t just—it’s, like, a million years old, right? I’m not even legal yet.” 

“Yeah, and I can’t drive.”

“It’s not an ancient evil’s fault you failed your road test three times, Richie, shut up,” Stan snaps. 

Eddie laughs. 

“Parallel parking is _hard!”_ Richie whines. “I don’t see the point. I’ll just park farther away and walk. You really think I’m going to maneuver into a tiny spot? Fuck that.”

“Will we _ever_ get to the bottom of this?” Ben demands. “Rich, I love your commentary but we have bigger fish to fry. You literally summoned a fucking _demon_ who wants to eat us. I’d like to live to see eighteen if that’s not too much to ask.”

Richie pouts, effectively silenced by Ben’s forcefulness, and buries his face in Eddie’s stomach. “Fine,” he says. “I can see where I’m not wanted.” His voice is muffled by the fabric of Eddie’s shirt. 

“Bill, what was your plan? What were you gonna do if we went back?” Mike asks. 

Bill presses his lips together. “I didn’t have one—“

“I _knew_ it,” Richie says.

“—but I was going to do whatever. Anything. I was so mad I wanted to rip that thing to pieces with my bare hands.”

“You gotta be smarter than It,” Georgie advises. “It likes mind games.”

“So what?” Richie sits up suddenly, brushing the hair out of his face. “I gotta give it three chances to figure out a riddle and if it fails I rip its leg off?”

“I don’t know,” Georgie says. “The turtle doesn’t know how to defeat It so I don’t either. He just knows you can do it.” 

“Wild,” Richie comments. 

“You don’t know anything, Richie? You got no hints or anything from the—the bridge or whatever?” Mike asks. 

“Nope,” Richie replies. “I didn’t even know my wish worked once I was done.”

“ _That’s_ also something I wanted to mention,” Bill broaches carefully. “When I wished, everything happened rather quickly. It took yours, what, months, right, to be fulfilled? Why is that?”

“Fuck if I know,” Richie responds. “I just did my little carving and hightailed out of there.”

“Today is Eddie’s birthday,” Stan says suddenly. “Would that have anything to do with it?”

“It didn’t care how old we were last time,” Ben muses. “Why care now?”

“Oh my god, Eddie! Happy birthday!” Bev exclaims, and the atmosphere shifts dizzyingly with her excitement. “I didn’t get you a present but I will.”

Eddie’s cheek flush. “You don’t have to. It’s not a big deal.”

“Of course it is! It’s your birthday! Not a big deal, _jeez.”_

“Richie cared that it was Eddie’s birthday,” Stan says. “He cared so much he called me and told me we had to go to the clubhouse.”

“Why’d you do that?” Bill questions. “How’d that come up?”

“I don’t know,” Richie answers. “I was just in my bathroom and then—there was this voice, and I knew it somehow. It was nice. I trusted it. It told me to go to the clubhouse, but it also told me to call Stan first because he had to know.”

“That same voice told me to wait for Stan on my steps at two in the morning,” Mike adds. 

“And it told me how to get to your house,” Stan says back, which makes Mike nod. He already knows this. 

“I think it was in my memory dream,” Bev murmurs thoughtfully. “It filled in pieces my brain couldn’t.”

“Ben? Bill?” 

Ben shakes his head. “I just got the clown… but the clown _did_ remind me I knew where it lived.”

“Nothing’s happened to me,” Bill admits, looking, oddly enough, put out by the fact. Eddie would love it if nothing happened to him.

But… maybe not. This wouldn’t have happened without any of it, but then again it wouldn’t have had to happen in the first place if there was no magic, no clown, no turtle, so… 

Now he has a headache. He digs a knuckle into his temple and abandons that train of thought for when he doesn’t have more pressing matters to face. 

“I lost my arm this morning,” Georgie offers up. “That happened to you. You were there when I healed it.”

“It gave me directions to Eddie’s, too,” Richie adds. “Whatever it is—“

“It’s the turtle,” Eddie cuts in, mind still whirling, and not in a fun way. “It’s been guiding you guys. It still doesn’t explain why now, but…”

“Maybe there is no real reason,” Bill says. “Maybe the when doesn’t matter.”

“Or maybe it only matters because Eddie’s birthday matters to Richie,” Stan counters. “He’s the one who wished and this was the first opportunity.”

“I _was_ especially scared this morning,” Richie says. “I always get sad on Eddie’s birthday but this time I was thinking about how it’s the last birthday of his I’ll ever spend here and I’ll never see him again… and I really, really wanted to because I had to ask him something…”

“The fear combined with the want,” Mike says, frowning in thought. “The fear brought It fully out of hiding and the want had the turtle guiding you to Eddie. It’s all you, Richie.”

“Fuck,” Richie mutters. “For the first time ever, I wish it wasn’t.”

“Have you ever gotten the urge to go to his house before?” Stan asks. 

“Maybe a few times,” Richie says. “I’d take the long way home from school sometimes and then realize halfway that I was going the wrong way. My mom once drove us down his street and I was so upset when we left it. It was like something was drawing me there, but it wasn’t until today that I really did anything about it.”

“You were high as shit,” Stan tells him. “I think you would’ve done anything honestly.”

Mike looks at Richie interestedly. “But being high makes you more vulnerable,” he says, “and without the tight hold you have on your brain, the suggestion was able to take root. The date only mattered because it mattered to Richie.”

“Okay, are we done with the whole blame game?” Richie asks. “ _I_ made the wish, _I_ picked the date, _I_ got the ball rolling. We get it. Stop talking about it before I vomit again and let’s come up with a _plan.”_

Eddie shifts closer to him, offering Richie his hand. “I think we already have one.”

“And what is it?”

“We have to finish what we started all those years ago,” Eddie says. “We survived for a reason.” 

“Because without you, we kind of gave up,” Bill says. “You’re the missing piece, Eddie.”

 _You were made for destruction,_ Eddie hears in his ear again. He hates it. He’s only ever been careful. 

“Lucky Seven or nothing,” Ben murmurs.

“And the plan is, what, using Eddie as bait or something? No, thanks, I don’t agree with that,” Richie says. “I’d rather run from a werewolf for the rest of the year than lose him again. Sorry.

“N-n-no,” Bill says. He blinks. Frowns. Shakes his head. “We gotta go buh-back to the huh-huh-house. We hit It on its own territory, make it hurt where It thinks It’s suh-safest and go a-after Its ego.”

“Bill,” Bev says softly. 

“I knuh-know,” he replies just as quietly. “It’s 1989.”

“Fuck,” Richie whispers. “Bill, I’m sorry, I didn’t know it would—“

Bill waves him off, quite literally, with his hand. “It th-th-thinks It’s the Eater of W-worlds or whatever, but it isn’t. It’s just a st-stupid fucking clown and I’m not ah-afraid. Not anymore.”

Eddie watches Bill take it all in stride—the circles they’ve talked around the why and the how, the purpose, and now the resurgence of his stutter, which brings about another set of issues. None of that seems to matter to him, though, to their little leader, who sets his jaw and lets the severity of the situation settle on his shoulders. He’ll do whatever it takes to get rid of this thing, this clown, this darkness. He’d been willing to risk it all four years ago, and it seems like that kind of determination doesn’t go away even after you’ve gotten all the things back you lost.

He remembers he’d been willing to lay his life down to make Bill happy, to give Bill closure. He’d stood outside a sewage drain opening, knee-deep in shitty water and he’d entered that old, decrepit house because Bill wanted to. Because Bill _needed_ to. 

But that never meant Eddie wasn’t scared. He was, but he’d been able to swallow that down, do what was right, what was necessary. And he’s afraid now—they all are, he can see it on their faces, no matter how hard they try to mask it—but there’s this feeling in the air, just like there was when they were barely teenagers. The decision has already been made for them. There’s no point in arguing about it or fighting it or trying to find another way; it only delays the inevitable. There is only this. 

_You were made for destruction._

_Shut_ up, Eddie thinks. 

“So what now?” Mike asks, abandoning his seat on the bike to settle closer to them, completing their circle. “What’s next?” 

Bill takes a moment to collect his thoughts, breathing deep and easy. It’s something he used to do when they were younger. If he could slow his brain down and have this mouth work at the same speed, he was less likely to stutter. From Richie’s wince, it’s clear he remembers that, too. 

“Since it’s restarting, basically,” Bill begins, “and we have to finish what we were supposed to do, the only other idea I had was to go back inside Neibolt. We’d already been in there, we knew what to expect, and I thought since we made it out alive, we could regroup and return and really get It the next time.” 

Mike nods. “Right, yeah, but you didn’t have a concrete plan. How were we supposed to go after that thing?” 

“It tried to trap us in there,” Richie says quietly, picking at his fingernails. “We heard Eddie screaming and we couldn’t even—I couldn’t figure out which fucking door would get us there. Remember? Not scary, scary—“

“—very scary, yeah,” Bill finishes. “I remember. But once we realized it didn’t matter _which_ door we chose…” 

“We were able to make the house smaller,” Richie murmurs. “It was like a fucking maze in there. Made no sense since the place is completely fucked and I’m pretty sure there’s a gaping hole in the wall on the second floor.” 

Eddie turns his head to the side so quickly he hears his neck crack. “The house did seem really big,” he agrees. “Like, I remember there being so many doors? And each one closed behind me? But there weren’t that many. The hall was so long and when I fell, it felt like it took forever even though it couldn’t have been that far down.” 

“Illusions,” Stan provides. “It’s all just a bunch of make believe… and we’re too old for that now.”

“You think it’ll be that easy?” Ben asks. “Because I was pretty convinced I was a mummy last night.” 

“No, but I do think that as we get older, we start to lose interest in things that once entertained us—make believe, for one. We outgrow things. We outgrow fears.” Stan sighs, pulling a hand over his face and aggravating the cut on his cheek. “Like, I’m not so much scared of the dark anymore, and if something freaks me out, I can logically think through it to figure out what it was. A shadow in the corner of my room? Just my coat on the back of the door. Shit like that. Take apart what makes the thing scary until it’s nothing but what’s actually there… and it’s no longer scary. It’s just a thing that spooked you for a second. You get over it. You move on.” 

“So we take apart It’s layers until we get to the core of what It is,” Eddie sums up, leaning his elbows on his knees. An excited thrum beats in his chest, spreads through his veins. It’s never seemed so _easy_ before. “And when we figure out what that is, without all the frills and the fears and whatever, we can kill It.”

Stan nods slowly. “Yeah, I think so.” 

“Were you ever afraid of It that suh-suh-summer, Stan?” Bill questions. The look on his face is hard to read. 

“Not in the way you all were,” Stan answers. “I was only afraid because it didn’t make any sense to me. How could it do that? Why could it do it? The lack of answers scared me more than the things It was showing me. I like to know things.” 

Richie elbows Eddie, the movement shakier than intended. “Stan’s a know-it-all.” 

“Am not,” Stan returns. “I just like to understand.”

“Well, whatever you are,” Eddie says, “I think you’re right. Behind all the masks and illusions and tricks, It is something that can be hurt.” 

“And I think It was afraid of us, back then,” Bev provides. “We kept getting away and It kept coming after us, again and again, like It had something to prove. Maybe we _are_ the ones who can get rid of it once and for all.” 

“God.” Richie falls back, body splayed like a starfish. One of his feet ends up on top of Eddie’s knee. “I wish I were anyone else today.” 

Eddie pats his calf. “Well, we better be quick,” he says. “I sent my mom to Portland for a birthday cake. She could be back at any time.”

“We’re doing this _today?”_ Richie whines. “Can’t a guy catch a break? I haven’t slept at all.” 

“You c-can sleep when it’s over,” Bill instructs, pushing himself to his feet. “Better to do it now than when It starts getting better ideas. Eddie, bring the baseball bat. Mike, can you get one of those things you use to sh-shoot the shuh-sheep?” 

“Probably,” Mike says. “I can also get an axe, if anyone wants.”

Stan raises his hand. “I want.” 

Richie pushes himself up to his elbows. “I am staying as far away from Stan as humanly possible.” 

Stan grins and makes a hacking motion in his direction. 

The rest of them start getting up and packing their things together with a sense of urgency—and a bit like they’re walking to their deaths. Eddie watches them all carefully: Ben, holding his stomach like his insides are going to fall out of it even though the wound is gone; Bev, biting her lip in what seems like deep thought, shoving the dirty rags and bandages into her backpack; Mike, showing Stan that his bike is fixed and then engaging in a quiet conversation Eddie can’t hear; and Bill, crouched in front of Georgie, looking at him like he’s seeing him for the first time.

“Hey,” Richie says softly, appearing in Eddie’s peripheral. “You ready, Spaghetti?” 

Eddie answers with an “I don’t know” before he can stop himself. 

“It’s okay to be scared,” Richie tells him. “I’m scared.”

“It’s not that,” Eddie says. “It’s… I’m worried. What do you think is going to happen after we kill It?” 

“I’ll be able to sleep,” Richie says. “Kids will stop going missing. We can live peacefully for the rest of the year.” 

Eddie swallows, looking up at him, and then looks away when he sees how Richie’s regarding him. He doesn’t want to see his face once he starts talking. Richie always manages to show the world everything he’s feeling, even if he doesn’t mean to. “No, I mean with me,” Eddie clarifies. “What happens with me when It disappears? Do I go too?”

“Not if I can help it,” Richie replies fiercely, strongly. Like he’s about to fight Eddie just for suggesting it. 

“What if it’s not up to you?” 

“ _I_ made that wish,” Richie says. “I may not have been specific enough to just find you without the rest of this shit, but I know for a fact I did not wish to find you and then lose you again. The magic and the turtle god and that fucking bridge—they _owe_ me. I’ll destroy them too if they undo everything. I’ll burn the bridge down. I’ll kill every turtle I see—“ 

“Really?” 

“No,” Richie admits, “but I’ll be really fucking mad.” 

“Me too,” Eddie says, peering up at him. The flush on Richie’s cheeks is the darkest pink Eddie has ever seen and it is so remarkably pretty. He wants to touch it. 

And he can.

So he does.

He pushes himself up to standing then to his toes, and brushes his fingers along the heated skin of Richie’s cheekbones. Richie’s mouth twitches as he turns to press a kiss to the inside of his palm. “Come on. I wanna show you something before we leave.” 

“What?” 

“The thing you liked most about the Barrens,” Richie explains, though it’s not much. He offers Eddie his hand, which he takes. “Follow me.” 

3

One second Georgie is looking at Bill and the next he is in the dark. 

It’s limitless. Black. The kind of void you can feel pressing in on you. Georgie can still hear Bill, but it’s like he’s underwater, so he can’t make out the words. He’s not sure if he’s responding, but none of that matters. Not when he’s here. 

The turtle.

Georgie had been waiting for this moment the second he’d seen Eddie. 

He should be scared—and there’s a tiny part of him that is, but it’s so deeply hidden within the rest of him that he hardly feels it. He’s more or less content here in the dark, a place he’d gotten used to before he’d been plucked from it, a swirling tornado of golden flecks and sparkling pinks dropping him right back into his bedroom as if he’d never left. But he did and he knew that. His family was thrilled to have him back, and the police and the government and whoever needed to be involved in changing his status from _deceased_ back to _living_ didn’t seem to have too many questions. 

But Georgie did. Why didn’t he like chocolate cake anymore? Why was he throwing up chicken? Why was he never thirsty and why could he sleep for so long and still feel _so_ tired?

And, well, the turtle showed up with all the answers, just as he is now. 

His eyes are kind as he blinks at him, huge, taking up the whole space and filling it with light. “You do not go with them,” he says in lieu of greeting. 

Georgie’s stomach drops, but it’s not anything he wasn’t prepared for. He’s known this. As much as he is part of this story, as _important_ as he is, he’s not… he’s not them. He’s not part of the Seven. He’s only the catalyst. “I know,” he says, and he sounds six again, nasally and high-pitched and _young._

“It restarts,” the turtle says, “and so do you. You go back to where it began.” 

“Yes,” Georgie says, already envisioning it: the rain, the material of his yellow raincoat, the way his boat ( _S.S. Georgie_ ) raced down the street and right into the sewer. “I know.” He can even smell the artificial carnival he’d been tricked with. 

The sick reality of it is that the only foods Georgie can ever stomach are the ones you see regularly at a carnival, so there’s that.

The turtle’s mouth presses into a thin line, like he’s upset. Like he’s unhappy for Georgie, like maybe he likes Georgie, but it’s hard to tell. He says, “I cannot tell you what will happen this time around. I do not see the path.” 

“That’s good, right?” asks Georgie, worrying his lower lip between his teeth. “You could see all the other paths they took when they were making decisions. If you can’t see this one, that must mean they do it… right?” 

“It is right,” the turtle agrees. He looks contemplative, but Georgie isn’t sure if that’s correct; he’s not easy to read, but Georgie has always felt like he’s understood him. “But I cannot see if it is good.” 

He might, but Georgie can; even if it’s full of mazes and problems and conflict, he knows, deep down in his gut, that this is right. Good. The _answer._ There’s a world out there where nothing hurts anyone anymore, not even a person’s own fears; a world where things go right all the time for his brother, for his friends, and Georgie has always known something to be true: for that reality to exist, he can’t be there. There is never a world, a universe, a _future_ Georgie gets to see, to live, if It is also in the picture, and unfortunately for Georgie, he’s been born into this one. He hopes, when all is said and done, he gets a different one, a better one—for all of them.

 _It has to be this one,_ he thinks almost desperately. He has to know when he leaves Bill gets to be happy. It’s the only thing he’s ever wanted, watching him around the house, a ghostly figure with no way to make contact, his very alive brother acting just like him. 

Georgie licks his lips—they’ve never been anything but dry and cracked—and meets the turtle’s gaze again. “How does it work? Do I just—can I take the long way?” 

“If by ‘long way’ you mean can you stop at the Bridge, yes,” the turtle answers. “You can make a Wish, but…” 

“I have to be specific, I know,” Georgie says. Lack of it is what got them all here in the first place, but he can’t be mad about that.

“No,” the turtle replies, “I was going to say that you can’t wish to live.” 

Something unsettling curls in Georgie’s stomach, gripping at him with sharpened claws. It tugs his heart down, too, all but rips it from where it’s been scotch-taped back together, cracking his ribs straight down the middle. He _hurts,_ which is never fun, but happens more often than not. He is neither here nor there, and every moment of his life is a mild inconvenience. Bill wished for him, just him, nothing else, and this is the version of Georgie he got: neither alive or dead, on the brink of two worlds with space for him in only one. 

“I know,” he says again, the only thing he can ever really say. There’s nothing else he _can._ He knows. He’s always known. “That’s not what I was going to wish for.” But it’s what he can hope for, right? There’s nothing wrong with that, with hoping for a different outcome, for hoping some part of this magic gives him the life he was denied. 

(He shouldn’t, though. He knows that, too. Hoping for something so unattainable only hurts in the end… and he already knows how badly this turns out. The hurt is excruciating.)

The turtle glides forward, closer, and Georgie realizes his skin is his favorite color, pretty and nice to look at. Calming. “What will you wish for then?” 

Georgie opens his mouth and then closes it, unsure. “Can I tell you or will that ruin it, like when you tell someone your birthday wish before blowing out the candles?” 

“Sharing a Wish does not take away the magic,” the turtle replies. He sounds oddly exasperated, like he finds that bit of humanity tiresome. “It will still be fulfilled, even if someone else knows. You share wishes with others all the time. They are just innermost desires, which should be spoken out loud. Keeping things bottled up does more harm than good. And, if you’ve forgotten, Georgie, I am more than just a _someone.”_

“Right,” Georgie says, bashful. “I, um. I want them to be happy.” 

The turtle’s mouth quirks sadly—or at least it frowns downwards just a smidge. “Happiness comes in many different forms and does not always mean the same to everyone,” he says. “It is not something you can wish for others, or even for yourself.”

“Oh.” Georgie closes his eyes and thinks hard about what he wants. Thinks of how to say it, how to make it matter, how to make it _count._ When he opens them again, he’s no longer in the dark. He can no longer hear Bill or feel the breeze of the Barrens. He smells the water of the Kenduskeag, feels cement beneath his knees and wood under his palms. He’s at the Kissing Bridge, and there is no one in sight, just him and a turtle too big to be normal. He pushes past the sorrow gnawing at him, clouding his intentions, and says, “I wish them luck.” 

“That is my wish for them, too,” the turtle agrees softly. 

Georgie nods, running his finger along the designs Bill carved into the bridge. A boat. A B. They look old, fading, like the magic there is already gone, having been spent. He spots Richie’s farther down, glowing still, and not in the faint sort of way many of these are; it is still active. It will always be active, Richie and Eddie. They were meant to stand the test of time, of distance, of life. For whatever it’s worth and no matter how cheesy it sounds, they were meant to be. Georgie doesn’t know why he knows that, or why it seems important. Perhaps it has something to do with the whole being dead thing. 

“Can you make them forget me this time?” he asks of his friend. “I don’t think they can handle it a second time.”

“I can,” the turtle says, “but is that what you want?” 

“No, not really,” he answers. After all, what is he if he’s forgotten? Nothing that mattered. No one. 

A leg brushes against his calf, soft and sweet, warm and familiar. It steadies him. It slows his racing heart. “What is it you want, George Denbrough?” 

He feels stupid, then, his eyes welling up with tears. None let loose, but his nose still stuffs up immediately, like he’s been sobbing for hours. “I don’t want to die,” he tells him, feeling smaller and younger and more scared than he ever has. “Not again.” 

“That is a common desire,” the turtle says. “No one wants to die, but it is part of life. I have been around for a long, long time, and it is still hard to see those with such brightness fade.” He moves forward again, shrinking so as to sit on Georgie’s shoulder, and presses his head to the underside of his chin. “You can wish for many things besides luck, Georgie. You can wish for strength, or knowledge, or you can wish for a better ending than the one that’s been dealt. There are many this can unfold into, and not all of them are kind.” 

“You’ve shared them with me,” Georgie recalls. They were ever-present in his nightmares, universes and moments that felt more like memories where bad, truly terrible things happen to his brother and his friends. Each and every one ends in a death count or misery that lasts years. Lifetimes. He shudders. “But Eddie is with them finally. Those aren’t real if Eddie’s there, right?”

“Perhaps,” the turtle says. “I have put the world in Eddie’s hands, but there is still a war to be waged. Even someone with all the knowledge in the world and the best intentions can make mistakes.” 

“Even if you are there to guide them?” 

“I cannot guide them when they are down below,” the turtle says sadly. “It is up to them, to who they are as people. I can only prepare them for the inevitable.” 

“It’s scary.”

“It is, and it is unfair,” the turtle agrees. “Have you decided on your wish?”

“I have.” Georgie feels the bridge beneath his finger as he draws out the symbol, using the hot touch of magic to carve into it. It finishes in a burst of color, of light, and settles, strong, amidst the rest. 

“It’s a good choice,” the turtle tells him. “I think it will help. Come on now. We do not have much time.” 

Georgie cranes his neck to look at him, seated comfortably by his neck. “We?” 

“We,” the turtle repeats. “I will not let you hurt alone. Not again.”

“Okay,” Georgie says, forcing himself up. “I’m a little scared.” 

“It’s okay. I will be there for you.” 

Georgie nods and takes one last look at the shell he etched into the bridge, teeming with his wishes, his wants, his desires, and then he turns on his heel before he loses his nerve and goes back to the sewer.

4

Back at the Barrens, Georgie looks up at Bill, face breaking out into a smile that tugs at his heartstrings, and says, “Bye, Bill. I love you.” 

It’s troubling the way he says it, with this certain finality, and Bill struggles to find a way to express that to him, when Georgie has always been so cryptic and _odd_ since he’s reappeared. But before he finds the words, even those as simple as _I love you, too,_ or _what,_ Georgie’s body flickers, fuzzy like the television screen gets sometimes.

His smile softens, less broad, more sad, and the outline of him fades. He looks less solid, less real. More like a ghost or a figment of Bill’s imagination, appearing as he did in his dreams, perfect, the same, but untouchable.

And then he disappears altogether, like he’d never been there at all, like he never once existed, and his finally parting words, _I’m rooting for you,_ sound like nothing but the whistle of the wind. 

5

Eddie’s grip on Richie’s hand tightens the farther they get from the clearing. The trees seem to multiply, naked branches criss-crossing above their heads and plunging them into a shadow that only seems to properly reflect their current predicament. He looks up at the way they cage them in, hiding the sky from view, and trips over a rock, or a hole, or something, whatever, tugging on Richie’s arm and shooting forward shakily. 

“Patience,” Richie teases. “We’re almost there.” 

“And _where_ is _there?_ ” Eddie asks for the millionth time. 

He knows the routes all around town and has some recollection of the Barrens, but he does not remember this. His body does, though; his feet familiar with the beaten path as if they’d taken it time and time again. If he closes his eyes, he can _feel_ it, the memories of them traipsing through this wild wood despite clear instruction from parents and authority figures not to. _Bad things happen in the Barrens,_ they’d all told them—at dinner tables, at school assemblies, randomly in the street. _You do not want to play there. Go to the park instead. To each other’s houses._

But the Losers never listened, even as they nodded and smiled and promised, fingers crossed behind their backs. They wanted to get away from all of that, from the people they’d see in parks or at their houses—away from the bullies, and the people who judged them, who never let them feel like they could really relax. They came here, initially to hide until this place became more of a home than their own did. They built things, made memories here, and never once had to apologize for being their authentic selves.

(There _were_ areas they steered clear of, the same as they stayed away from other parts of town, the places that were riddled with discomfort, tangible and spreading, making them itchy. Stan decided they were all overrun with poison ivy and they never stepped foot there again. But Eddie knew not everything could be poison ivy, even as they all pretended it was. It was easier to ignore that way… until it wasn’t.)

“I would hate to go on long car rides with you,” Richie says. He pitches his voice high, like Eddie is still in the throes of puberty, like his balls haven’t fucking dropped, and they _have,_ thanks! “ _Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we—“_

Eddie rushes forward, this time on purpose, and shoulders Richie so hard he careens over, clearly still not one with his long, gangly body. He feels a wave of satisfaction, as he always does when he manages to mess with Richie, but it leaves as quickly as it comes, leaving him breathless. Richie’s free hand flies out to grab Eddie’s waist. The touch does as it always does; it sends a shiver up his side, makes him limp, and he follows Richie like a domino, both of them on the ground before Eddie can even blink. 

Richie’s heart beats wildly beneath his chest, where Eddie’s palm lies. He looks up at him, pupils wide. The pink flush of his cheeks makes his freckles pop, has the dark black of his lashes on full display. “I don’t sound like that,” he snaps, because that’s what this was all about before they ended up in his position.

And it’s a position they’ve been in a number of times—playing, wrestling, literally just pushing each other for the fun of it—but it’s never felt quite like this. Or maybe it has and now is the only time Eddie’s allowed himself to focus on it. 

“Right,” Richie replies, sounding like he’s been punched in the gut. “I’m sorry. You’d never say anything as mundane as that. Allow me to rephrase…” He clears his throat and Eddie knows he’ll hate whatever he comes up with even before he says it. “ _Have we reached our destination?”_

“I do not have an _accent!_ ” 

“That wasn’t supposed to… sorry,” Richie says. “I guess I associate pretension with my British accent.”

Eddie pokes his cheek roughly. “That’s an insult to British people everywhere,” he says. “Doubly so because your accent is _still_ terrible.” 

“I don’t practice it all that often.” Richie lifts his neck and snaps his teeth, trying to get Eddie’s finger as he pulls it away. 

“And I am _not_ pretentious,” Eddie grumbles. 

“No, no, never,” Richie concedes, humor in his voice. He reaches up and runs his hand through Eddie’s hair, like that’s an effective way to prove that. “But we are almost there. You don’t remember yet?”

Eddie tilts his head, kind of like a cat, and makes a humming noise of dissent. “Not really. I don’t know,” he says. “I’ve remembered a lot of things today. I may have remembered this, but it was, like, a lot of information, so…”

Richie narrows his eyes, searching Eddie’s face. “Probably like a whole information overload, huh?”

“Sort of,” Eddie says, “but not really. It’s, like, it was always there. I just couldn’t find it, but I know where we are. Kinda. It feels like I’ve been here before.”

“We used to come here all the time,” Richie tells him. 

“Me and you?”

“All of us.” Richie nudges him, trying to unlodge Eddie from his person, sitting up when he doesn’t move. “But yeah, mainly me and you,” he says. “All the time.”

“Why?” Eddie asks, trying to ignore the fact that he’s straddling Richie’s lap, which is… it’s really hard to do. He feels his heat, the muscle of his thighs. His own knees dig into the dirt, which is uncomfortable, but he does not want to move. He wants to cling. 

Richie says nothing about the way he wraps his arms around him, tugging him close. He lets out a tiny little squeak when Eddie buries his face in his neck, his nose cold against his skin, and hugs him back, fingers slipping beneath the fabric of his sweater. “I liked spending time with you.”

“I liked that, too,” Eddie replies, “but I meant why did we always come here?”

“You didn’t like the arcade as much as I did,” Richie says, “and there were always too many people around anyway, so we—came here. And I could _show_ you if you got off me.”

“M’comfy,” Eddie replies.

“Yeah,” Richie agrees, his voice nothing but a soft exhale. “But we don’t have a lot of time.”

Eddie frowns, pulling back, and sighs. “I know.” But what he doesn’t know is what he means by that. We don’t have a lot of time until we have to go back to Neibolt? We don’t have a lot of time _in general?_ Together? _I_ don’t have a lot of time?

His heart thump-thump- _thumps_ in his chest, uncertain, unsure, _afraid,_ maybe, but Eddie doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want to be any of that—he’s spent so long letting that control him. 

But not today. 

Not anymore. 

There isn’t much space between them, but he closes it anyway, pressing his mouth to Richie’s. 

Richie inhales sharply and matches him with a tilt of his head. His hands come up to cup Eddie’s cheeks, bringing him closer. Eddie hums happily, tangling his fingers in Richie’s hair, opening up beneath him when Richie surges to take charge. The kiss escalates from there until Eddie bites down on Richie’s lower lip and _sucks,_ eliciting a low groan from Richie’s throat. 

Eddie gasps at the sound, pulling back, still so wrapped up in Richie’s arms that their noses touch and Eddie’s lips tingle at the sensation, warm and aching. 

(There is a rustling somewhere behind them.

A snapping of branches.

An equal gasp to Eddie’s, more scandalized than his.

Unfortunately Richie and Eddie do not hear it, as wrapped up in each other as they are.

It is, probably, their one downfall.)

“Show me,” Eddie says, breathless. 

Richie blinks at him, lashes fluttering, eyes bright, and says, “You still have to get off me.” The sound of his voice has Eddie’s heart racing, leaping, _flying._

He tells it to shut up. It doesn’t listen. If anything, it speeds up, makes Eddie feel like he’s been sprinting for hours. And it’s not bad, the rush he feels, the way he thinks he’ll never catch his breath. He wants to burrow into this moment and live in it forever, this tiny slice of life he almost never got to have. He doesn’t want to have to face what comes next. He wants this: a boy he loves, a forest floor, and an embrace that feels warm, comforting, never-ending. 

But Eddie knows in Derry even the most perfect moments must end. They do not have a place here. Not yet, anyway. 

He slides out of Richie’s hold and pushes himself up, wiping his palms on his jeans. He feels Richie watch him, his gaze like molten lava, like wildfire, like something Eddie does not yet know. It burns him from the inside out. He meets his eyes, not sure what his own face is doing, but feeling like he’s been flipped upside down at the look on Richie’s, and slowly offers him his hand. 

“What was that for?” Richie asks, standing taller than him, their fingers locked. 

“I don’t know how much time we have,” Eddie says, “but I wanted to make sure we had time for that.”

“I am ready to kill this fucking clown,” Richie murmurs. “I think I understand Bill now. I want to just— _ugh,_ I want to rip It _apart.”_

Eddie wrinkles his nose, but feels particularly endeared by how strongly Richie feels, how willing he is to go into the dragon’s den just for him, and knows he feels exactly the same. 

“Show me the special place first,” Eddie suggests, “then you can do whatever you want.”

Richie snorts, leading the way, his grip on Eddie sweaty and tight, like he’s afraid to be parted from him. “That’s literally the last thing I _want_ to do.”

“Okay, so what’s the first?”

Eddie’s cheeks heat up in a way that rivals the sun, it feels, when Richie turns his head to look back at him. The expression there is enough to—it settles in his gut, warm and syrupy. It takes hold. It… 

“Whoa,” he whispers. 

“Oh, I mean, I didn’t—normally I’d do a joke about your mom, but, like, I, uh… don’t really like those anymore, so—oh, you’re not even looking at me.” 

Richie’s babbling sounds so far off, Eddie’s attention on the treetops, some still hanging on to their colorful leaves, and the sprawling view of their town, somehow beautiful from up here, even as it is nasty and ugly down below. Eddie shuffles closer, letting go of Richie’s hand, and takes it all in. The air feels different, lighter, easier to breathe; the shine of the sun is reflected below, sparkling and blue—

And Eddie remembers summer days of leaping off of this cliff, tumbling down until he hit the water, cold and refreshing as the temperature climbed steadily. 

He remembers games and laughter and feeling more free than he ever has, Richie or Stan or Bill attempting to drown him until he hooked his foot around their ankles and shoved them back. He remembers cooler weather, collecting leaves and jumping in piles, and constructing forts in the winter, pathetic igloos that fell apart almost immediately. One time Bill was convinced they could ice skate here, and even Richie was dubious, waiting at the frozen water’s edge for Bill to fall in (which he did). 

Those were fun times, all of them together, the four of them and then the seven of them, but what Eddie _really_ remembers is coming here with Richie, and only Richie. 

They did that a lot. 

He turns around to look at him, pale and tired with all of these bruises on his fair skin, and Eddie thinks he could cry. Richie is real, and Eddie is real, and all of this—it’s _here,_ it’s _real,_ it’s not something he could have ever made up in his wildest dreams because he just remembered it _now._

Richie swallows. “This was your favorite spot. It made you—“

“—feel better,” Eddie finishes. “About everything.” He twirls around, feels like he’s spinning in a meadow like some character in a rom-com, and looks out again. “The world is so big and I am so small, even with all my issues.”

“You don’t have any issues,” Richie says softly. 

“I have plenty,” Eddie corrects, “but up here they don’t matter, and besides, my mom would freak out if she knew I were here.”

“She never found out we played here?”

Eddie shakes his head. “I always left early so I could be at the library or the school or… anywhere that wasn’t here. I didn’t want her to take this from me too. It was the only thing that was really mine.”

He feels Richie come up behind him, the air warming, and is pulled against him, his head tucked beneath his chin. 

“I used to come here a lot after the whole… you know, whatever,” Richie says. 

“Yeah? You had time between the wishing and the letter writing?”

Richie laughs, kneeing him in the thigh. “Shut up,” he mutters. “I was _coping.”_

“Not very well,” Eddie replies. “I never got the letters. I would’ve responded if I did.”

“Yeah, I figured. I did forget where you lived so after a while I was just mailing them to _Eddie Kaspbrak,_ no address, and that probably wouldn’t have gotten very far.” 

Eddie sighs and doesn’t let his train of thought careen down a pathway he can’t handle. He doesn’t want to know what life could have been like if he’d known better. There’s never any point in _what if_ s. They only bring more pain than they’re worth. 

“What is it you wanted to ask me?” 

“Hmm?” Richie asks. “I wanted to ask you something?”

“Yeah…” Eddie broaches, thinking back to their little powwow and Richie’s word-vomit confession. “You said you were scared this morning and you really wanted to ask me something and that’s kind of why this whole thing happened?”

“Oh.” Richie fidgets a bit, loosens his hold on him, and steps back, which makes Eddie turn around. “Um… I was, like, not doing well? But I never do well on your birthday so that’s nothing new. It was—it’s nothing. I was overreacting.”

Eddie raises his eyebrows. “It isn’t _nothing,”_ he argues. “It can’t be nothing if it upset you.”

“I was high. It doesn’t matter.”

“ _Richie.”_

“It’s nothing! Really! In the grand scheme of things, it’s so small. It’s barely on my radar. I don’t even remember—“

“—okay and because it’s nothing and it’s so small and it’s barely on your radar you are putting up a _fight—“_

“—it doesn’t matter, really, it’s dumb—“

“—this is _me_ you’re talking to! If you can tell _Stan,_ you can tell _me—“_

“—I didn’t understand any of it,” Richie blurts. “I was… I was _thirteen and confused_ when you just disappeared and I didn’t understand it was the magic and I thought… I th-thought…”

Eddie moves closer, entering Richie’s personal bubble, and for someone who said this _didn’t matter,_ it really looks like it does. Or it did. “You thought what?” he asks, voice so low he thinks he may have imagined the question. 

“I thought I did something wrong,” Richie says. His eyes are wide behind his glasses, cheeks pink again; Eddie doesn’t remember him blushing so much, or being so embarrassed by who he is. “I thought I’d been too obvious and you figured it out and you didn’t like me and you were mad at me for everything that happened, that I abandoned you, and you hated me, and I really just—I wanted to ask you why you…” The word cracks, so Richie clears his throat. “Left. Why you left me.”

“I didn’t,” Eddie says. “I wouldn’t.”

“Look, I know, but you asked.” Richie pushes his glasses up his face and into his hair, a thing he does when he feels particularly uncomfortable. It’s like a shield, Eddie guesses, though he’s never known why this happens, just that he’s done it more than once in the past ten hours, and he’s been more vulnerable than he’s been in his entire life since he climbed through Eddie’s window. “It felt like the end of the world. We were fighting a fucking _clown,_ right? Bill’s brother was _gone,_ all these kids we knew were just posters on a wall or a telephone pole or a window and… and I had to deal with that on top of figuring out that I liked you the way Bill and Ben liked Bev, and that was a lot for me, but it was like fucking candy to that stupid thing who tormented me with it _constantly—“_

“The first time I saw it, it was a leper who said it’d pay me for a blowjob,” Eddie says flatly. “It was on its hands and knees and it was so gross and so dirty and every awful thing I ever could have imagined and it sang this stupid rhyme at me and tried to shove coins in my hands.” He looks away to watch a bird fly high above them, suddenly concerned about animals ( _is it orange? No_ ) and looks to see Richie staring at him oddly, mouth parted just enough for Eddie to see a glimpse of his two front teeth. “I ran so fucking fast and I didn’t know what I was more afraid of: this thing that just appeared, like straight up crawled out from under the house, or that it knew that about me when I hadn’t said anything to anyone or even admitted to myself.”

Richie presses his knuckle to his eye and all but deflates. “I didn’t say anything either, but everyone was always saying that about me anyway,” he admits. “They’d write it all over the place like they wrote things about Bev. Ben doesn’t know I know but he’d spent hours just trying to clean it off when he saw it. I’m convinced that’s where all his upper body strength came from.”

“Plausible.”

Richie mimics him kind of rudely, wrinkling his nose, but Eddie doesn’t care. “It just… it was a lot, right? And then you were just gone and I thought… I thought it was my fault. That I did too much or said the wrong thing or you figured out that I loved you in the wrong way and you took your mom up on her offer to leave. She always wanted to.” 

“I didn’t,” Eddie says softly. “I would never… I’d never make friends like you guys again so why would I _want_ to leave? She’d have to take me out kicking and screaming.”

“You were very good at tantrums.” Richie sniffs, putting his glasses back on. His eyes are kind of glassy. Eddie stares at him like they’re not. “Okay, so that’s where I’ve been. A mess. No one knows how to deal with me except for Stan so I just bother him all the time. I think he’s sick of me.”

“No,” Eddie says immediately. “He loves you. Stop being stupid.”

“Yeah, I know.” Richie’s smile is kind of wobbly. “Four years of that and it’s not even the worst of it. I get really upset on your birthday because, like, obviously, but today I was really overwhelmed with you being seventeen and this being our last year in Derry ever—I’m not coming back once I leave, fuck this place—and I was really high. Did I mention that?”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Once or twice.”

“That plays a major factor, I’m convinced. I’m not this much of a freak show.”

“Just a minor one.”

Richie flips him off. “Yeah, and you’re a pain in my ass.”

“But you missed me.”

“I missed you,” Richie agrees, mouth curving fondly, “and I’m having, like, a panic attack in my bathroom, so I call Stan because I guess the turtle told me to and we go to the clubhouse because the other voice told me to.”

“The other voice?”

“It sounded like it’d be good for Halloween,” Richie explains, which helps very little. “I didn’t like it, but it was right. I should go to the clubhouse. So I did.”

“And then the werewolf showed up,” Eddie summarizes. “Was the voice It? Can it get in our heads like that?”

 _A dumb question,_ he thinks almost immediately. It has been in his head almost exclusively for the past week, if not longer. In his _house_ for years, if his hunch is proven correct. He almost wants to backtrack, but Richie’s already talking again.

“It can get in mine since I unleashed it or whatever,” he says. “But it…” He draws the word out, long and slow. Purposefully. “It wasn’t the werewolf first.”

“Wait.” Eddie frowns, feeling like he hasn’t heard correctly when he knows he has. “There were two things that terrorized you?”

“Yeah.” Richie reaches his hand out, a stiff motion, and Eddie gives him his. Richie closes his fingers around Eddie’s wrist, pressing his thumb to his pulse and does not let go. “It was you first. The you I saw in Neibolt.”

“Me? It terrorizes you with _me?”_

“Yeah, dude. It’s been doing that this whole time. I’m probably the easiest person to harass now since it knows my secret or what-fucking-ever.”

Eddie’s stomach flips and drops, like how he imagines it would on a rollercoaster. Richie is so blasé about it, so resigned, and it makes him nauseous. Because that means… it means…

It always manifests as their biggest fears, right?

All of Eddie’s had been ingrained in him from a young age until he could hardly untangle them or tell them apart. Sickness, dirt, and sexuality all formed a nice little ball, all knotted up at his feet, and Eddie could never make heads or tails of what truly scared him in what moment. The leper that day was all three, a physical manifestation of what his mother thought gay people were—dirty, wrong, diseased. Beggars, too, probably, if the thing was forcing him dimes. 

It had taken a lot of reflection, a lot of time by himself—which he had too much of—to realize his biggest fear wasn’t any of those. It was being alone forever, being lonely, being stuck with his mom and no one else for the rest of his life. It was not being given the chance to live or the ability to choose. Not being able to make mistakes and learn from them. It was having his life mapped out for him, every last detail, and not being able to say, _hey, I don’t like that and I will not do it._

He’d gotten a taste of that with his friends and then that was taken from him, but he never really forgot it. How else would he know the things his mother did bothered him? Weren’t right? How could he settle for a life of discontent after that? How could he go from being so known to being nothing? 

He can’t.

He couldn’t.

He won’t.

“So you weren’t kidding then,” Eddie says slowly. “I _do_ make you nervous.”

“Yeah, of course you make me nervous, but in a good way,” Richie replies. “In an excited way.”

“But if It terrorizes you with me… that means you’re scared of me.”

Richie shakes his head so hard he all but dislodges his glasses. He pushes them back up his nose with a trembling finger and ends up poking himself in the eye. “I’m not scared of you. How could I be scared of you? You’re three feet tall.” 

“You’re not _that_ much taller than me,” Eddie retorts. “And if you’re not scared of me then why am I the thing that keeps popping up?”

“It’s not you I’m scared of,” Richie says.

“Then what is it?” Eddie asks, stepping on his toes as he shuffles closer, invading his space. “Because I’m not… I’m not something to be afraid of, Rich.”

“There were three futures I saw for myself in that house,” Richie tells him. “One where I was missing, one where I was dead, and one where you were—“ He comes to a stop, sudden and uncomfortable, his nose wrinkling, and physically looks like he’s going to be sick, which…

That’s entirely possible, given who he apparently is as a person. 

Eddie tucks a mess of hair behind Richie’s ear and then holds his jaw like it’s as precious and breakable as the china Eddie’s mom always threatens to use but never does, hidden away in a cabinet somewhere. “Where I’m what?” he carefully prods. “It can’t hurt you now. You know it can’t. It’s not—“

“—real?” Richie finishes for him, unexpectedly laughing. Eddie’s fingers shift, his thumb pressing against Richie’s lower lip. He doesn’t mind. “Of course it’s real. It’s all real. It’s all so terribly real that I can’t—it _can_ hurt me, Eds, and it already has.” He blinks wildly, owlishly, pupils not fixating well on Eddie, like he sees him but also sees right through him. “Life is fleeting. This is fleeting. Time. You. Us. I don’t remember what he meant, or what he said—“ 

“ _Who?”_

“The version of you that It likes to be when It sees me now,” Richie says fast, words running into each other. “When I was with Bill, in that house, you manifested as something I was afraid of, I guess, because, sure, I was afraid of you back then. I was afraid of how I felt and what that meant, and I was afraid of losing you, but even my fears aren’t specific enough, and It created you just… You asked if I wanted to play loogie, which I normally did, but you were spitting up all this gunk, and it was dirty and black and gross and you were _dying_ and…” He writhes with a full body shudder, this image of Eddie clearly affecting him even now as the _real, alive, not choking on black gross shit_ version stands right before him. “It’s real, how can it not be? I couldn’t make up any of that and It made sure to really hammer home how real it could get, and then it got _worse,_ because you were _gone,_ and I didn’t realize how fucking terrifying that was until it happened, and… and…” 

His hand grips Eddie’s tighter than before; Eddie is worried he’ll lose circulation if he keeps this up, but the look on Richie’s face, in his eye, makes him realize why Richie’s been holding him so often, so close, so roughly. He’s making sure he’s there. 

And he proves that thought correct when Richie blurts out, soft and scared, “Every second I’m convinced that I’m wrong. That I’m in my bathroom or I’m in the clubhouse or maybe _I’m_ the one who’s died and you’re not really here. Eddie, I _can’t—“_

“Richie.” Eddie’s voice is stern, controlled. He’s operating at a one hundred when he should be at, like, a ten, and he feels like he has no control of his body, his mouth, his brain. All he knows is he wants to change Richie’s expression, stricken and confused and so bare, so _scared._ He’s seen him terrified before, and it was nothing like this. This is—fuck, this worse, if you can believe it. He never wants to see Richie look like this again. “I’m right here. We’re in the Barrens, not your bathroom or the clubhouse or some fucked up afterlife where you’ve died. I’m _here._ Can’t you feel me?” 

A beat, and then, “Yeah.” 

“What do I feel like?” 

“Warm,” Richie murmurs. “Right. Not slimy.” 

“I would hope so,” Eddie replies. “I would hate to be slimy.” 

Richie’s mouth twitches. “Yeah, you would.”

The distant look fades from his eyes, and he moves, freeing his hands so he can hold Eddie’s cheeks. Eddie moves even closer, if that’s possible, and he’s not sure it is, but it feels like it somehow. Like he and Richie are one, fitting into the spaces their bodies made for the other, like that Greek myth or whatever. Four eyes, four arms, four legs. Perfect now that they are whole again. 

“Want me to tell you something I remember?” Eddie asks. It’s what he did in his kitchen, right? Pulled him back with memories that clown doesn’t know. 

“Sure,” Richie breathes. “Yeah.” He bends down, presses their forehead together. 

“We came here instead of hanging out with the others once,” Eddie begins, and it’s like he’s plucking this story out of thin air. He has no idea how it ends, just that it’s right and it’s true and he will be able to reel Richie back in with it. “It was a Friday, I think, or a Saturday. I don’t remember, but it was definitely in the eighth grade and it was spring.” 

“Okay,” Richie says. “Spring is nice here. Colorful.” 

“Anywhere is nice when you’re there,” Eddie murmurs absently, the memory pulsing behind his eyes. “Okay, I remember. It was the night of the stupid spring dance and you threw rocks at my window to coax me out, so it must’ve been a Saturday.”

Richie nods, dawning coloring his cheeks red, giving him life again. “And you just flipped me off and walked right out your front door even though your mom definitely didn’t want you out and didn’t want you with me. It was so baller, dude.” 

“I was practically invincible then.”

“You still call Sonia Mommy.” 

“I can be invincible and call my mother _Mommy,_ ” Eddie grumbles. “What do you call your mom?” 

“Maggie,” Richie says immediately. “Actually, no. I call her Mags. I don’t like Mom. It doesn’t feel right.” 

“Right. Cool. So we’ve established what we call our mothers. Can I continue with my story?” 

“Yes, yes, sorry, my liege,” Richie replies. The dopey nickname means he’s back, _normal,_ in his own body, but Eddie still feels the need to finish. “Go on.”

“Anyway, you were like _Bill convinced Stan to go to the dance, which Stan pretended to be annoyed about but he loves the gossip so he’s actually thrilled, but I am not going._ And when I didn’t say anything, you got all nervous like _I_ was, but, like, in what world? And you tried to convince me not to go by showing me those awful wine coolers you stole from your sister—“

“—oh my god, those were terrible, holy shit, what flavor were they?” 

Eddie laughs. “I have no idea. Strawberry? Raspberry? Didn’t matter though because we drank all of them here. On this cliff. Not safe, probably, but that didn’t matter.” 

“And they were like five percent alcohol so did we even really get drunk?” Richie asks. “I was always buzzing when I was with you, so I don’t remember if I was or not.” 

“I don’t think I was, not really,” Eddie agrees, “but you were telling me some dumb story about, like, _math_ class, I don’t know, so fucking lame, and the sun was setting behind you, and I remember thinking you looked so pretty with the sky like that, pink and stuff, and I could lean over and kiss you if I wanted and blame it on the wine coolers if you got freaked out. But I didn’t. I almost did.” 

Richie wets his lips. Eddie watches this with rapt attention. He thinks Richie did that, too, years ago, and he’d reacted just the same. But now those lips part as he asks, “You woulda kissed me back then? Even with all the… the disease stuff?” 

“Yeah,” Eddie whispers. “I just hid behind that when I realized why I wanted to kiss you.” 

“Why’d you want to kiss me?” 

Eddie feels his cheeks heat him, hot and fast, and Richie pinches one of them, clearly amused by it, even as his own face mirrors Eddie’s. “Because some time between second grade and then, I’d developed a crush on you, I guess.” 

“You _guess?_ ” 

“Yeah, I didn’t know. I thought I was having, like, heartburn or something.” 

Richie makes this weird snuffling sort of noise as he smiles at him. “The sun isn’t setting or anything, but you can kiss me now, if you want.” 

Eddie slides his palm beneath Richie’s layers to settle over his heart, where he feels it beating slow and steady. With his hand there, he pushes himself to his tiptoes, craning up to meet Richie’s mouth, and whispers, “I’m _real,_ ” before he kisses him, just like he’d wanted to, last time the two of them were here together. Alone-together, that is. 

But it’s probably better than that, since Eddie knows what a kiss is supposed to be like and Richie isn’t, y’know, an annoying thirteen year old. 

Richie mumbles something like _I know_ or _I’m sorry_ or _Me too_ and reciprocates the kiss in such a way that has Eddie’s toes curling, which is really uncomfortable when he’s literally balancing on them. He drops down to flat feet, using his other hand to curl around Richie’s neck and pull him down to his level, and sighs into his mouth. 

“It’s not going to get us,” Eddie says when he pulls away, “not again.” It’s a promise he intends to keep, the strength of it making the scar on his palm tingle. Magic bubbles in his veins, calling out, matching the integrity of his words, like it’s itching for a fight. 

He thinks it might be, or, in true Eddie fashion, it’s just him who wants to kick something. 

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” a voice that is not Richie’s sounds.

Eddie freezes, fingers closing around a fistful of Richie’s hair and pulling, startled, but it’s almost like Richie doesn’t feel it. He merely groans, exasperated and annoyed, slumping against Eddie. “Not _again,”_ he mutters.

And then it manages to get even worse. 

“ _EDWARD!”_ Sonia Kaspbrak screeches. It is astounding how loud she can be and honestly amazing how judgmental she can have one word sound. 

“Oh fuck, oh shit, oh _no,”_ Eddie blurts, trying to shrink, trying to disappear, trying to—fade away from this spot, this town, this planet, this _astral plane._

In his terror, his horror, his desire to turn into a rat and _run,_ Eddie matches the first voice to a person, and that makes him stand up straight again. “Ma, why are you with _Henry Bowers?”_

“Why are you with _Richie Tozier?”_ she throws back. Her voice holds the same tone; Eddie’s forgotten what it was like to argue with her like this. They can both sound so petty and righteous. 

“He’s my friend,” Eddie says immediately, stepping out of Richie’s hold.

Richie’s hands remain curled up around nothing, his eyes shut.

“Ma’am, I do not do that with _my_ friends,” Victor Criss says obediently, like he’s some trained show dog and not the world’s biggest skeezball.

“You don’t have friends, dickwad,” Bowers sneers at Eddie. “Who would wanna be friends with you?”

Eddie feels his mouth fall open, eyes darting from face to face—Patrick Hockstetter is here, too—before landing on his mother. She looks the same, fully in control, and he doesn’t know if that’s worse. Looking at these kids, he can tell that at least _part_ of them has been tampered with; they look too robotic to be their normal asshole selves, the same of which can be said about Belch, back by the stream. His mother, though… she’s as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as ever, and she’s _mad._

Well, fun fact: so is Eddie. 

“I don’t have friends because she made sure I didn’t, asshole,” Eddie snaps. “Ma, why are you with these guys? They used to fucking bully me all the time.”

“ _They_ bully you?” she repeats, incredulous. “Look at poor Henry over here. He says you threw him over the bridge!” 

“I didn’t throw him over the—I hit him with a baseball bat,” Eddie corrects. “ _Poor Henry?_ Why are you calling him _poor Henry?_ I wouldn’t have had to do that if he hadn’t been trying to _skewer Ben._ ” 

Richie shakes himself out and turns around, shoving his hands in his pockets. “And we all know he murdered his dad, so it’s not like he needs our pity.”

“How’d you come up with that, you fairy?” Henry spits.

“I mean, look at you,” Richie offers. “You have patricide written all over your dumb tshirt. Oh, my bad, do you not know what that means? It means you _killed your father.”_

Sonia looks at him with unmasked distaste, the likes of which Eddie hasn’t seen in years. Maybe ever. She’d always tolerated Richie before, let him in the house and drove him home from school if it was raining, but today she looks like he’s killed her husband and burned down their house. “Come over here, Eddie-bear,” she orders. _Richie_ bristles at the nickname. “Get away from the dirty, dirty boy before he brainwashes you any further.” 

“Mom, I’m not—“ 

“ _Edward,”_ she says shrilly. 

He grits his teeth. “No.” 

“No?” She tilts her head to the side, looking like a confused dog. “Did you just— _no,_ Eddie really? Come over here. It’s not a request.” 

“I don’t care,” he says. “I don’t want to go with you. I don’t want to leave them again.” 

“It’s not like you have a choice, Eddie,” she snaps. He doesn’t move. She tries to smile at him, big and fake, but he sees right through it, just as he’s been doing since he was, like, ten. “Oh, Eddie, please,” she begs, changing her tune, “he’s already gotten into you so deep. Come home with Mommy, there’s still time to clean you up.” 

Eddie shakes his head. “No, Ma. I don’t need cleaning up. I’m not dirty.” 

“Honey, that’s where you’re wrong. You do. Good boys don’t kiss other boys. It’s simply not done. It’s dirty. It’s sick. It’s wrong. When we get home, you’ll take your medicine and you’ll be right as rain.” She smiles again, like she’s said something profound, and holds her hand out. “Come along, dear. Mommy knows best.” 

Richie’s voice comes hard and sharp at his side. “Does she?”

Sonia turns her head to look at him, lifting her nose like Richie isn’t almost a whole foot taller than her. “Pardon?” 

“Sorry.” Richie clears his throat obnoxiously and hacks out a loogie that has Sonia’s lips curling. “I said _does she?_ As in, do you _really_ know best, Mrs. K? Is that why Eddie’s prescriptions are all a bunch of bullshit?” 

Eddie starts. “What?” 

“It’s what Greta said at the pharmacy,” Richie tells him, but his gaze never leaves his mother’s face. “That everything is just a bunch of phonies. Placebos. It’s nothing. Doesn’t _do_ anything.” 

To Henry, Sonia hisses, “Get rid of him.” 

To Eddie, she says, “Now that’s not true, baby. You need all of those. You’re very sick, remember? So fragile. Have you taken them today? You look peaky.” 

Eddie’s tongue is stuck to the roof of his mouth, feeling like it’s been stapled there, and all he wants to do is scream. He watches Henry snap his fingers, sending Criss and Patrick to do his dirty work—no, his _mom’s_ dirty work—and throws his hand out to grab Richie’s. He holds tight, tighter than he’s done all day; he will not let them do this to him, not after everything they’ve already been through today. Not after everything Richie’s told him he’s scared of. Not after he’s gotten him back.

 _No,_ he thinks. 

_Please,_ he begs. 

“ _Mom,”_ he tries to plead, but it comes out weak, like he’s spent the past twenty-four hours screaming at the top of his lungs. 

Patrick and Criss advance, and there is nothing particularly menacing about who Patrick Hockstetter is as a person, but stories of him flood Eddie’s brain, hitting him full force like his head’s been shoved underwater again. Knives and homemade fire torches and burn marks on wrists from cigarettes he doesn’t even smoke. Criss is even worse, huge and bulky; one hit from him and Richie will snap like a toothpick.

“Mom!” Eddie tries again. “Mom, you can’t possibly—“ 

She disregards Richie like he’s a pesky fly, like he’s nothing, not a kid she’s known for Eddie’s whole life, and smiles at him again. “Honey, come on, let’s go home. I’ll make you some tea and you can take your medicine. Why did you come outside in the first place? You know it’s not safe.” 

Bowers snickers. “Yeah, Eddie-bear, it’s _not safe.”_

Sonia doesn’t hear the baby voice he adopts or how he’s making fun of both of them now. Eddie grits his teeth.

“No,” he says. “I’m going to stay right here. With my real family. The one you kept me from.” 

She sighs. “Why must you always make this so _hard,_ Eddie-bear? Don’t you know I worry about you?” 

“I’m seventeen, not seven,” Eddie argues. 

Richie’s fingers tighten around his, Criss and Patrick growing closer. 

“You are still my baby,” Sonia says. “Come home with me, Eddie. This will only end badly for you. He doesn’t really love you. If he did, he’d try harder. You really think he _forgot_ where you lived when I’ve got _all_ of these letters with _our_ address on them? He just wants one thing from you—“

“—from the town nutjob,” Henry’s voice comes cackling through. “The hypochondriac _loser!”_

“—and when he gets it, he’ll toss you aside like you’re nothing. Like you don’t matter,” Sonia says, like she hasn’t heard the insults her new friend has shot at her son. “Boys are terribly gross, honey, and horribly rude and self-centered. That’s why sweet boys like you should never, ever interact with boys like _him._ Come, baby. I can make it all go away.” 

“No!” The word is ripped from Eddie’s throat, a strangled cry that sounds more breathless than defensive. “Not again. You can’t keep making everything _go away._ ” 

“Eds, she’s lying,” Richie blurts. “I would never… I’m not… you’re the only person I’ve ever loved, the only person I’d do anything for. I’d _die_ for you, Eddie, you have to know that. That’s not my handwriting. You know what it looks like. You have so much of it already.”

Eddie swallows hard. “I know,” he says, but it isn’t the words that are getting to him. It’s the way she’s looking at him, like he’s not her son, like he’s… he’s a _puppet._ A _doll._ Something for her to play with and abandon once she’s grown bored. He’s always felt like that. It feels like it’s been that way forever, but it’s only been since he started forming his own opinions, or telling her about things his friends said, agreeing with them and disagreeing with her. If he didn’t play the part of the perfect, devoted son, she’d make him, twisting words and calling other parents and _tattling,_ making him seem like he’s more work than he is. Like he’s high maintenance. Like he’s a problem… and all so she can have him to herself. It’s a wonder Eddie ever learned how to share. 

“I told you words wouldn’t work, Mrs. K,” Bowers says. The familiar way he’s speaking to his mother makes Eddie’s skin crawl. “May I suggest we do it my way now? It’s much more efficient.” 

“Oh.” Sonia’s brows crease in distress. “He’s all roughed up already—“

“—from _him!_ ” Eddie shouts. “Him and his stupid gang of fuckin’ teen _murderers—“_

“No worries.” Henry flashes his teeth at Eddie and pats his pocket. “We’ll do it with the stuff we snagged from that real nice nurse at the hospital.” He produces a needle and a bottle, like the ones they used to sedate Eddie when his mom thought he was “getting out of control” at his unnecessary doctor visits and the fear that bursts through him is enough to have him curl up in a ball and cry.

 _Not again,_ he thinks. _Not again not again not again not again no no no—_

He’ll lose time. He’ll forget. He won’t _know—_

Eddie shakes his head and steps backwards, tugging Richie along with him, body trembling and breathing ragged. The world seems to spin, his throat closes, and his heart races, but like a horse does. It’s grown four legs and hooves and is running around his chest cavity like it’s a track and everyone in the country has bet money on it. Eddie can’t even feel it. Can’t figure out if he’s managed to get any oxygen to his brain. He’s so dizzy and Bowers is going to inject him with something awful and horrendous and scary and Eddie is going to wake up four years in the future and not know who the fuck he is or why he’s ever mattered in the first place. 

This is all of his nightmares wrapped up into one big _fuck you_ from the clown itself. 

“Eds, can you hear me?” 

He answers _yes,_ but he’s not sure it’s a sound. He’s not sure he made one.

“Listen to my voice, okay? _Fuck off, Hockstetter—_ and breathe, okay? Can you do that for me? In for three and out for three. Nothing can hurt you. It’s not real.” 

Eddie doesn’t follow the instructions, blurting out, “I thought it was real, Richie.” 

“It’s not,” Richie says. “I was having a panic attack before. You were right. It’s not real. It doesn’t have to be real if you don’t believe it is.” 

Eddie blinks, but everything is still just a blur of color. He feels like he did right before he fell through the house into the kitchen, before the clown came to eat his face off, and maybe that’s happening right now? Maybe no time has passed since then and he’s just getting devoured, teeth sharp and mouth red and pain so deep at his neck. His arm hurts, a loud snap pulling his fingers away from where they were holding something. He can feel the crack all the way up to his shoulder, an ache already settling in his bones. Weak bones. That’s what his mom says. He doesn’t get enough calcium because he can’t drink milk and he really ought to stop riding his bikes with Bill and Stan and Richie. 

“ _Hey!”_ A voice shouts. 

Eddie recognizes it. He latches on, tries to follow it, but he can’t. His arm hurts. He cradles it to his chest and feels a tug at his other arm, pulling him forward, twisting his body. There is the sting of an injection at the inside of his elbow and suddenly the pain is gone. He feels like he’s floating, and then he feels nauseous, and then his mother is holding him in her arms, cooing things at him like he’s ten years old.

But he’s not ten years old.

Is he?

“Oh, baby, your arm,” she says. “Come on, let’s get that checked out. Looks like it’ll need a cast.” 

“ _Oh, fuck you,”_ that same voice yells at her, which Eddie thinks might be mean, but he trusts that voice, so it has to be right. And it’s not like it’s saying anything Eddie’s never wanted to say to her before. “ _You did that to him! Eddie, Eds, can you hear me? We’ll come back for you, I promise, I won’t leave you in that house, your mother is not right, okay?”_

Eddie swallows the really big lump in his throat—like, it’s so big, it’s soccer ball-sized, practically—and says, “Richie?” 

“Shhh, no, no,” his mother answers. “That dirty boy is nowhere near us. It’s just me and you. I’ll take care of you. Don’t I always?” 

“No,” Eddie replies, garbled and slurred. “No… I don—I don’t think so, really. You kinda always make it… worse.” 

Sonia’s inhale is sharp and angry. Even in his state, Eddie can recognize it. “That’s a terrible thing to say to your mother!”

“Oh,” Eddie mumbles. “M’sorry. I didn’t mean it.” He hiccups. Coughs. “Don’t feel well.” 

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” she says. “Those boys did a number on you. I always told you not to hang out with them.” 

Eddie takes a deep, ragged breath, and tries to listen out for that voice again, but he hears nothing. Why would it leave him? Didn’t it say it wouldn’t? “But I like them,” he tells her, getting jostled into the backseat of a car. His mom’s car. It smells like her perfume. It makes him throw up. 

“Can’t imagine why,” she replies, and that’s the last thing he remembers.

6

“You’d really die for him, fag?” Patrick Hockstetter leers, towering over Richie. It has to be illegal to be that tall. Where the hell is his center of gravity? He looks like he’s going to fall over any second. 

Richie tears his gaze away from where Eddie is sluggishly fighting his mother and Henry Bowers, both trying to get him as far away from here as possible, and blinks back the tears he knows he’ll cry later. He’s so stupid. So dumb. A fucking _moron._ He never should’ve separated from the group, never should have been so selfish as to sneak more time with Eddie than he’s already been allowed. If all of them had been together… 

The seven of them lost the last battle against Mrs. K, he has to remind himself. Who is he kidding this time? They’ve already had their asses handed to them more times than he can count today. 

And now here’s the worst of them. “Yeah,” he says. “Why? You gonna murder me like you murdered those other kids?” 

“No, not yet,” Patrick decides, malicious grin taking up most of his face until he looks more deranged than usual. “There are _other_ things I can do to you first.” 

“Yeah?” Richie asks, backing up blindly. “Like what?” 

“Something you’d probably like…” 

Richie’s mouth twists. “What do you think I’d like?” he demands, sounding braver than he feels. He’s heard the stories about Patrick Hockstetter, a sociopath who doesn’t take no for an answer and always gets what he wants, even if the other party isn’t so… _keen_ on giving it. 

And Patrick—he doesn’t care if you’re a boy or a girl. If he wants it, he’ll take it. 

“I think you know,” Patrick says. “You and Baby Kaspbrak put on quite the show back there— _both_ times.” His mouth widens into a predatorial sneer, looking quite like he’s about to have his cake and eat it too. “Really scandalized his mom, poor lady, but it was pretty good. He done anything else to you?” 

“No,” Richie snaps, voice unwavering. 

“You want him to?” 

“No,” he repeats, and then, because he’s an idiot, “not if he doesn’t want to.” 

“So you do want him to?” Patrick asks. “Or is it _you_ that wants to do it? Is what they write in the bathrooms true, Richie Tozier? Do you really beg for it? Do you just _love_ cock so much you’ll—“ 

Richie tunes him out and stumbles to a stop, his left foot about to keep going down, down, down into the quarry below. He is so frazzled, so afraid of it, that he surges forward, grabbing on to the first steady thing he sees—which is Patrick, obviously; he’s the _only_ thing here. Richie has no idea where Criss went, but he’s all muscle and no brain, so it makes sense he’d leave as soon as the interesting bit stopped. 

No, Richie is here with only Patrick Hockstetter for company, and he’s really, truly, one hundred percent certain he’s going to stick his hand down his pants, and then murder him or something. That’s a thing he’d do. 

And Richie would rather free fall blindly backwards into the freezing water below than have Patrick’s creepy crawling hands anywhere near his dick, so he takes a deep breath, yells, “ _STAAAAAAAAAAN!”_ at the top of his lungs, his voice so loud and the effort so strong that his throat feels like it’s bleeding, and takes that final step back. He can hear the name echo through the Barrens like a siren call.

Patrick tries to let go of him when he feels him lose his footing, but Richie won’t let him, digging his nails into his elbows and clinging. He can’t stop playing now, not when the fun is just beginning. Richie tries to calculate the drop—he’s done it a million times before—and takes a deep breath in. 

Two bodies hit the water below, crashing and cold and violent. 

Only one comes out. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> believe it or not i was going to end this after section 2 because at the time i thought it was too long hahahaahahaok


	9. change the fates' design

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stan _snaps,_ breaking his own stupor. All ten of his fingers end up tight around Patrick’s neck, squeezing until he lets go of Richie, who immediately scrambles upwards and maybe comes back down to haul Stan away, he isn’t that sure. He keeps squeezing and squeezing and _squeezing,_ only stopping when arms loop around his shoulders, holding him securely at the armpits and pulling him back.
> 
> Patrick Hockstetter’s body drops to the floor of the lake, slower than Stan thought it would. It always seems so fast in movies. Not that he’s seen a lot of movies where a person drowns to death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in the book, stan's It fear happens at the standpipe, but I moved it to the quarry just to make it fit the story better
> 
> this chapter is brought to you by my fierce headcanon that stephen king killed stan because he knew just how powerful he was. boy doesn't even need his friends to kill It, he'll do it himself. he and eddie are major contenders and stephen king KNEW IT and still fucked them both over but it's whatever i'm not mad at all
> 
> so i'm still going to try to make the chapter count i established, but half of what i wanted to write about didn't make the cut here. bill was supposed to do some cool pascal-esque shit but instead made it all about himself and it felt right to end it there. also this chapter is kind of gross? and stan is the best but we established that numerous times already

1

“I really don’t like going into this without a plan,” Stan says, pushing his bike by the handlebar. He trusts that Mike has fixed it—Mike knows how to fix everything—but there’s something stopping him from riding it through the rest of the Barrens. He feels like it would make him move too fast, and he needs to be still. Be aware. It’s the same feeling he got when he agreed to go to the clubhouse at one in the morning, and when he sprinted over four miles to the farm. “We didn’t have one last time and look where we are now.”

Mike follows at his side, hands loosely in his pockets. “Well, we have a plan, don’t we?”

Stan refrains from scoffing—a plan? They really think whatever nonsense they spewed up was a _plan?_ Don’t remind him he contributed to most of it, thanks. “It’s an idea,” he says. “Hardly anything to run into head-on.”

“But it feels right, doesn’t it?” Mike asks. “I don’t have any issues with it. It’s like… when you said to peel its layers away, this sort of—I don’t know what to call it, but—it’s like something came over me, told me that’s _it._ That’s the only way. That was brilliant, did you know?”

Stan bites down on the inside of his cheek, face flushing, and spares a glance at him. Mike’s posture is strong, straight; he walks easily, comfortably, without any of the unease Stan feels swirling in his stomach. “It _wasn’t…_ it’s just something my mom told me to do when I got scared,” he admits, “which I did that summer. A lot. Like, I’ll be the first to say I’m not scared or it’s not real or—whatever, right? But I still… it still scared me, knowing there was something out there that could do that.”

“It’s perfectly normal to be afraid,” Mike replies. He turns his head to look at him, which makes Stan look away quickly, focusing on the path ahead, at the trees in the way. “No one would think any less of you if you told us you were.”

“Yeah, but I’m not,” Stan replies with a sniff, even as his heart feels like it’s been squeezed with an iron grip. He’s not scared. He _isn’t._ He’s faced worse than whatever the fuck this thing is—clown, that stupid portrait, the army of dead kids, climbing out of the fucking quarry, ready to wrap their bloated fingers around his throat and drag him down with them.

It’s not real. All of that… it’s just stuff that freaks him out. Clowns always look like they’re going to murder you, right, like why are they so happy all the time if they _aren’t_ plotting your death? And that portrait is ugly; it is not surrealism or whatever the fuck his dad thinks it is. It’s just the most disturbing picture Stan’s ever seen, and it has eyes that follow him around that room like he’s doing something wrong (and he’s not. He never does anything wrong). The kids? Just a story he read when he was really little, probably in the paper when he was still trying to learn words, and it reminds him to be diligent when he swims. Drowning is such a painful way to go. He’s researched it.

What _is_ real, what’s worse than all of those things he’s seen, is getting called names, getting his nose broken, and getting beat up just because he’s Jewish. Fuck, he thinks if Bowers and half the shitty Derry community could, they’d throw him in a gas chamber or something, and he’s never seen _that_ as an It hallucination, so that thing doesn’t know _shit._

But that doesn’t stop this weird feeling from curling up inside him, making him feel small and—not scared but _nervous,_ which is incredibly valid, and causing his hands to tighten on the bike’s handlebar.

“I’m not,” he repeats. Blinks. Sees that woman and her fucking flute, high above in the branches of a nearby oak. Blinks. Hears the thudding footsteps of six or seven kids, water dripping loudly from their pale, emaciated faces somewhere behind him. Blinks. “I’m not afraid of any of it. It should be afraid of me. Of us.”

“It is,” Mike comments. “Bev’s right. We’re the only ones who survived it, so it keeps coming after us and it’ll keep doing that until it gets rid of us. We’re the only ones with the power. It is afraid. I think for the first time.”

“Yeah, you’re—do you hear that?” Stan asks, whipping his head around, searching—

That was definitely his name, and…

His heart leaps, turns over, and sends adrenaline through his entire body. He feels weightless, spry, like he could run all the way to Canada and back in under twenty minutes.

“ _Richie,”_ he blurts.

His bike hasn’t even hit the ground by the time he’s breaking through some kind of thorny underbrush.

Mike thuds behind him, feet heavy in his work boots. Stan ignores the feel of skinny branches slapping across his face, following the sound of Richie’s shriek, which has stopped in real time but continues to play on repeat in his mind. He’s aware of everything and nothing as he heads to the water, hoping he’s not too late.

Too late for _what?_ He wonders frantically, because even though he knows something is wrong he doesn’t know what and the act of not knowing freaks him out. The act of not knowing what’s happening to _Richie…_

He likes to understand things. He’s just established that. Not knowing, not understanding—that’s not an option for Stanley Uris. He _has_ to have an answer.

Stan comes to a skidding halt by the water’s edge, squinting up at the cliff and around the perimeter, looking for… _for what?_

“What the fuck,” he mutters. “Where _are_ you?”

Mike’s hand comes shooting out by his side, finger pointing towards the middle of the quarry. “He’s in there.”

“How do you—?” The rest of the question dies on Stan’s tongue. Frantic bubbles rise to the surface; a leg kicks out; an elbow jabs. “Oh _fuck,”_ Stan says, or mumbles, or yells, or—he doesn’t know. It just bursts out of him, frenzied and nervous and _angry,_ the sight of a beat-up black boot inciting something terribly territorial in him.

He doesn’t realize what he’s doing until he’s already underwater.

It’s frigid in the quarry, and he feels both weightless and heavy, logged down by his clothes and freed from gravity. He hasn’t felt this way since maybe age thirteen—when was the last time they’d come here for fucking _fun?_ Had he known the last time was the last time? Had he appreciated it?

Probably not, and now is not the time to reminisce on that.

Stan kicks out, arms slicing through the water, and opens his eyes. He blinks, lashes sticking together, and peers through the clear fluidity ahead of him, looking for Richie and that fucking boot and the asshole connected to it.

He sees them up ahead, Richie fighting valiantly, as he always does, rearing his head back and slamming it against Patrick Hockstetter. Patrick yelps, the bubbles prove that much, and Richie surges up, attempting to swim his way back. He makes it just shy of the surface before Patrick grabs him again, pulling him down.

Stan is too far away to do anything. He speeds up, doing some wild form of swimming, a terrible mockery of the lessons he’d taken as a child. It’s like he’s moving through sludge, or molasses, sticky and slow, even as his limbs move erratically. Richie gets farther and farther away even as Stan closes the distance, but there’s more and more as he struggles to reach him. It’s like the space has expanded, _grown,_ miles and miles between him and his best friend and he _just_ needs to get to—

— _he needs—_

_Fuck._

Stan gasps, teeth clenched together and jaw tight, his body moving forward and at the same time being forced back. It’s a painful tug of war, his bones feeling like they’re going to snap in two.

He feels a creak, a crack, in his knee, which keeps him still. There is a slimy, shiver-inducing drag down the length of his calf, one that makes him itchy and uncomfortable. He bites down on his tongue, wriggling, but the thing holds tight, wrapping around his foot—some kind of plant, probably, though Stan can’t recall what exactly lives at the bottom of this lake. He fidgets to get the curl of—it has to be a weed—from around his ankle.

Ahead, he watches Richie struggle, attempting to dislodge Patrick. To get out, to… _breathe,_ probably. How long has he been down here? How can he manage it? He seems to have lost his glasses, typical of Richie, but an issue nonetheless.

Stan kicks again—to free himself, to force his body forward. The plant tightens around him as he moves, pulling him back. It happens so suddenly he forgets himself, who he is, _where_ he is, and opens his mouth in surprise. Water floods in, stinging, sharp, and metallic, spilling down the length of his throat until he’s coughing, struggling himself. He winds his arms upwards, seeking the solace of the world above, but is unceremoniously pulled down again. It feels almost as if there is a grip on his foot, so tangled he is in the weeds. He looks down, body contorting to tug at where he’s caught, and—

He rears back, numerous pairs of eyes blinking back at him in the darkness below. The lake fills with the sound of their laughter, childish and delighted. It makes him shudder. Has the giddiness of children always been so terrifying? So _evil?_

(Maybe. Horror movies sure do love to utilize the inherent creepiness of children. But he’s not fully aware enough to make this distinction.)

The plant around his leg is not a plant at all, but the hand of a boy, gray and withered, sharp nails digging into the exposed skin between his shoe and pant leg. He knows him. He was just looking at him, not even twenty feet away.

 _Hi, Stan,_ his mouth seems to say. _Is this real enough for you now?_

Stan freezes. It lasts no longer than a second, less, even, but it is enough for a second pair of hands to grab his other foot. He loses control of his lower body, can’t even move it, can’t even _feel_ it, and gets dragged down, down, _down._ The water is dark here, murky, which doesn’t make any sense. Stan’s been all the way at the bottom of the quarry before. They used to make games of it, holding their breaths until the last possible second, someone else timing them to see how long they can last.

It’s never looked like this before. Has never felt so deep and so dank and so endless.

More children appear as if they are waiting for him, all in varying states of decay. One doesn’t have an eye. Another’s face is so swollen Stan only sees cheeks. Hair on another, a girl, is limp and knotted, most having fallen out in what looks like chunks, but there is proof it used to be vibrant and— _red._

Stan’s heart skips a beat and stills, his gaze moving from one face to the next. He’s forgotten how to breathe. He doesn’t need to breathe? It doesn’t matter if he does? His mind is a swirling, whirling mess, thoughts twisted together, moving at one hundred miles per hour. He can’t hold onto anything—there’s _nothing—_ nothing that makes sense, at least, even as something clicks into place.

The two bodies pulling him down have bulky glasses and a fanny pack.

“Richie, stop,” he says. His voice comes out garbled, not even English. He is ignored, dragged down until he’s close enough to the others he can almost touch them.

The Losers stand there, eager and excited. Bill, in those baseball shirts he used to wear religiously, dead-eyed and smiling vacantly; Ben, the one with the cheeks and what looks like a hammer; Mike, holding both a cattle gun and an axe, leaning his weight onto the latter. Stan blinks repeatedly, trying to clear his head, remembering the news story that freaked him out so much.

There were more kids, not six. Right?

Yeah, there were a bunch. Maybe, like, ten.

No, that’s not right.

There were…

 _Seven,_ that same voice says. _They were you. The story you are so afraid of is your life, Stanley Uris. Don’t you remember?_

No.

That can’t be—that’s _not—_

Stan just saw them all. They’d talked. They’d laughed. He _cried,_ for fuck’s sake, holding Eddie like he was some kind of rag doll or something. None of them looked like this. This isn’t real. It never happened—at least not to them. Kids drowned and died, and they showed their waterlogged faces and bodies after they pulled them from the quarry right there on the front page. Stan had been terrified, but he kept going back to it, staring in bewildered amazement at the way bodies expand, bloat. How lives can _end,_ just like that.

It was the first time Stan had ever been afraid of dying. The first time he ever asked what happened after, where did they go? No one had an appropriate answer for him. There is no answer, he suspects.

_You know where they go. You’ve always known. You’re already there._

“No,” he says. “I’m not. I’m… I’m—”

 _Dead,_ Mike says. _You’ve always been dead._

Stan’s gaze snaps to him, his blood thrumming at the accusation, but all he can see is bright lights. They sear into his eyes, large and blinding, far in the distance but so close, eclipsing the dead versions of his friends so they are nothing but dark figures. The light is like the sun, burning into him, scarring his retinas, making everything a great burst of white when he blinks. It hurts. He wants to look away. He wants to keep looking.

 _Stan,_ the kids, his friends, the _lights_ say. _Stay, Stan. We miss you. Stan, Stan, Stan…_

It rises in a chant, a cacophony of sound, louder and shriller than the last. He hears Bev’s laugh, more maniacal than he’s used to, and there is something wrong with the way Bill pronounces his name, sounds more like _stain_ than _Stan._ It’s unnerving, uncomfortable, hitting him like a punch to the gut.

This is not where he is. This is not where he ends up. It’s not real. He’s not dead.

_It’s not real._

What’s real? He’s real. The people in front of him, on top of him… they’re real, too, but not here. Not underwater, where they can’t breathe.

What’s real is the quarry he’s jumped into in the middle of November. What’s real is the hypothermia he’ll get. What’s real is his body, and his mind, and his lungs, which will burst if he stays under—

_He’s under-fucking-water._

How could he forget he’s _underwater?_

How long has it been? How is he still alive? ( _You’re not,_ a voice mocks, sounding too mean to be Ben.) Time seems nonexistent, branching out and curling forwards, then backwards, twirling and twinging and circular. He sees so _much,_ life laid out before him with all of its twists and turns. ( _Everything that has happened,_ Bev tells him. _Everything that will happen._ ) All of its possibilities. He gasps, chokes, and swallows a huge mouthful of water. ( _But what is real, Stan?_ asks Mike. _What is your reality?_ ) His lungs shriek and burn, overcome as he loses control, flailing. There’s so much water: in his eyes, in his nose, in his mouth, down his throat. _Around him._

He needs to get out of here.

Richie and Eddie giggle together as they pull him further down, where the darkness thickens. It sounds like nails on a chalkboard, grating at his ears.

Stan focuses on that unfamiliarity, especially in Richie, who he spends almost every single day with, and kicks his foot out, not feeling the least bit apologetic for hitting him in the face.

Richie shrieks, reaching up to hold its nose, gushing with black blood. Eddie’s face twists frighteningly, furious in a way Stan has never seen it, and he lets go of Stan to fuss over Richie’s broken nose, turning his face to the right and left as if to inspect it. As if they’re really his friends and not just a hallucination created by the thing hunting them for sport.

Stan lets himself worry for one second that his friends are actually at the bottom of this lake and he’s intentionally hurt one of them, but that can’t be right. It can’t be.

 _Why not? You are not always right, Stan._ That’s Mike’s voice. _You have to accept your failings. You don’t always have to know everything. It’s alright to be wrong. You’re almost always wrong._

But Stan is not wrong about this. He knows he needs to get to the tiny light he can see above. He knows it the same way he knows everything else; it feels right. Going lower, letting his friends, if that’s who they are, lure him down until he disappears in the darkness—that’s wrong.

So he ignores the fatigue setting in his arms and shoots up. He feels like he’s done three hundred push-ups or run six miles without stopping, but he can’t stay here.

His name is called again, over and over, rising levels of disbelief and annoyance— _Stan, Stan, Stan, come back! Don’t leave us here!_

But Stan does, reminding himself that _they_ aren’t his friends. His friends are above water, some of them, and Richie is—the _real_ Richie—he needs him. That’s why he’s here. He’ll always come when Richie calls.

Stan kicks harder, breaks the surface, and takes a deep breath, greedily filling his lungs. He coughs loudly, outrageously, sounding like he’s choking. Like he’d been underwater for… he can’t even _fathom_ the amount of time. Can’t begin to think about how long he thinks he was down there. It felt like hours. Days, even, though that’s impossible. If it were days, he’d be dead; if it were hours, he’d be… also probably dead.

_You’ve always been dead._

He presses his hand to his chest and feels his heart beating overtime. Presses his fingers to his pulse points and feels it there too, proof that he’s a real ass person and that everything they said to him was wrong. He’s alive.

He’s here.

But… shouldn’t Mike have noticed he’d been under for too long? Mike’s not the type of person to just abandon his friends, to let them fight their battles alone, not after the Losers threw down for him, a relative stranger, in a rock fight against a notorious group of bullies. Why had he left him there? Why hadn’t he come to save him? He could’ve used the back-up, the help. Mike and Stan against the six Losers, against _It._ They keep talking about being stronger together, and yet…

Why hadn’t…?

He could’ve…

Stan twists to look back, expecting to see… he doesn’t know, the clown himself chomping on Mike’s neck, rendering him useless. To his utmost surprise, he sees Mike _just_ get to the lake, bursting through the trees, like no time has passed since Stan jumped in himself.

No, like time has _reversed._

Mike breathes hard, finds Stan in the water, and gestures wildly behind him. “Stan!” he shouts. “Look!”

Stan treads carefully, worry eclipsing his confusion, and is hit with a wave of water Richie sends his way—accidental, surely, since he doesn’t know Stan is even here. He does get Patrick nice in the face, though, knuckles to the cheekbone. He watches as Patrick’s neck jerks to the side, and he spits a mouthful of quarry water straight into Richie’s eyes.

Then they’re beneath the surface again.

This time Stan manages to close the distance between them. Nothing tries to pull him away. It takes maybe two minutes, even with the exhaustion prickling in the back of his mind, and he doesn’t even think about what happened before when he takes another deep breath and submerges himself once more.

He’s quick to react but not really seeing, torpedoing himself into Patrick’s side. The kid is puny, a real stick of a guy, and the surprise of extra weight has him releasing Richie and pitching over, roughly forced away. It helps that Stan kicks him in the shoulder, too, trying to get him as far as possible.

Richie blinks in surprise, eyes widening when he notices Stan, even without his glasses. Relief washes over him, his face open and vulnerable in a way Stan has never seen it—not even during the few weeks of It or the first couple months after Eddie’s initial disappearance. Stan is normally the one calling for Richie to stop burrowing his feelings (hypocritical, he knows, shut up), but he never wants to see this look on him again.

The Richie he knows laughs all the time, even when he’s scared—or maybe _especially_ when he’s scared—and Stan has really never thought he’d want that version of him back again once he’s been silenced. But he does, he really, _really_ does, so he grabs him tight at the elbow and swims up again, tugging him along.

The distance from where they are to the surface is just as easy to close as it was before, after the whole It thing. Stan can feel the welcome heat of the sun warm his face, the cold whip of the wind against his cheeks, the harrowing silence, _emptiness,_ that becomes the Barrens, and embraces it all, happy to see it.

But his glee is short-lived.

The frantic tug on his arm has worry festering in his veins. There is a splash at his side, Richie’s head bursting from the water for one gasp of air he wastes on blurting Stan’s name. The sound of it has his skin crawling.

Can’t _anything_ be easy for them?

There’s no answer. He doesn’t know why he expected there to be one.

He rubs at his eyes and plunges down again, just in time to see Patrick dig his fingers in the hair at Richie’s scalp, snapping his neck back. Richie’s fear is so palpable Stan can taste it like he’s the one this is happening to, his heart seizing like it’s been gripped with an iron fist. This is not unusual for them; he and Richie are so close he somehow manages to feel everything the way Richie does.

Patrick tugs and tugs at Richie’s hair, forcing his body into a highly uncomfortable position, avoiding Richie’s struggling legs as they attempt to kick backwards at his shins. His knees. Any part of Patrick he can find. The water makes it easy for slimy Patrick to slip away, to avoid confrontation and attack all the while keeping the upper hand. Stan watches for a second too long as Patrick uses his free hand to pry open Richie’s mouth, forcing it full of water.

Richie bites down hard on his thumb, jaw clenching, and fidgets, all but spasming, Patrick’s remaining fingers digging into the skin of his cheek and chin. Richie pulls helplessly at him, his own body weakening, sinking. He makes the mistake of gasping around the fingers Patrick forces between his teeth, inhaling water, and Stan—

Well, the correct term for it is “snaps.”

Stan _snaps,_ breaking his own stupor. All ten of his fingers end up tight around Patrick’s neck, squeezing until he lets go of Richie, who immediately scrambles upwards and maybe comes back down to haul Stan away, he isn’t that sure. He keeps squeezing and squeezing and _squeezing,_ only stopping when arms loop around his shoulders, holding him securely at the armpits and pulling him back.

Patrick Hockstetter’s body drops to the floor of the lake, slower than Stan thought it would. It always seems so fast in movies. Not that he’s seen a lot of movies where a person drowns to death.

Stan, on the other hand, moves backwards quick, like he’s a puppet being pulled by his marionette strings. Water surges around him, filling his ears, his eyes trained on the fathomless darkness Patrick falls into. He disappears as if he’s been swallowed whole; a tremor splinters through the unseen ground, running up Stan’s spine. That childlike laughter fills the lake, haunting and chilling, but it’s gone as soon as Stan’s above water.

He’s thrown back on the ground, dying grass crunching beneath him. The chill he felt earlier makes him shiver, drenched as he is. Beside him, Richie coughs up a combination of water and vomit, trembling, knuckles white while he grasps at the ground. Stan throws his arm out, searching for him, and wraps his fingers around his elbow, taking deep, measured breaths. The sky above them is blue and cloudless.

A shadow casts over them both, Mike crouching in front of them. He rubs a hand down Richie’s back, comforting as best he can, murmuring something to him Stan can’t get his brain to focus on. He watches a bird fly by—he thinks it’s a robin with its orange underbelly—and asks, “Does Patrick Hockstetter have any family that will notice a long, incredibly questionable absence?” His tone is clipped. Clinical. Remarkably detached.

“Um,” Mike says. “I’m not sure?” He pats Richie’s back as his shoulders tense, body going rigid. “Yep, just like that, Rich. Get it all out.”

Richie coughs around a loud, wet heave, and blurts, “Stan, you just—you _killed_ him.”

“He was going to kill you,” Stan says. Just like Belch was going to kill Eddie. Just like every single bully of theirs went too far and too fast and didn’t care whether they lived or died. Stan is sick of it.

“But that doesn’t mean—”

“It was the right thing to do,” Stan interrupts fiercely. “I’m pretty sure Patrick date-rapes unsuspecting gir—people. I did the world a favor.”

“Stan, it was mur—”

“—self-defense—”

“—he wasn’t hurting _you,_ ” Richie argues, forcing himself to his knees.

Stan shrugs, still staring straight ahead. “Anyone that hurts you also hurts me,” he says, sharp and snippy. It still reeks of sentimentality, which Stan hates and Richie will gloat about once he’s in his right mind, but it is the truth. “I do not regret it.”

In the corner of his eye, Stan watches Richie open his mouth with a rebuttal and then snap it shut. He’s wide-eyed and flushed, pupils blown and face pale. His freckles are so dark and clustered in comparison they look like dirt. “Thank you, Stan,” he whispers.

“You look like a drowned rat,” Stan says. The words _you’re welcome_ get caught in his throat, but they’re there all the same.

Richie swallows. “I feel like a drowned rat.” He shakes his hair out, spraying Stan and Mike with the water caught in it.

“I think dogs do that,” Mike comments.

“I’m a wet dog, then,” Richie amends.

A silence falls over them, not comfortable but not uncomfortable either, where Stan checks his pulse again. Listens to his heartbeat. He’s here. He’s here. He’s real. Richie is here, and he’s real too, and Mike is as well, stalwart and true, casting a strong eye over both of them.

Whatever happened in the lake, that was a product of his own thoughts and the magic that is so tightly wound in the town’s foundations. It wasn’t real. He’d been worried about Richie, who could’ve _died,_ and his brain immediately went to those kids that drowned, and they took on the images of his friends because he’s concerned about them too and all of the dangerous things that’ve happened to them today alone.

Peel back the layers and he’ll always find the reason for why things happen. It’s as simple as that.

“Richie,” Mike starts cautiously, voice pitching in that unassuming way of his, “where’s Eddie?”

Okay, so maybe it’s not that simple.

Stan shoots up. Blood rushes to his head, making him dizzy. For a second there are two of each of them, blurring into one another. He blinks rapidly to clear his vision and slides his hand down Richie’s forearm, grasping his palm tight when he sees the look on his face.

It’s—

He’s— _distraught,_ face torn up so openly Stan has to force himself not to look away. The expression makes him paler than before. Sickly, almost.

Mike moves closer, dropping to his knees, and Richie buries his face in his thigh. His hair sticks to the side of his neck; Mike runs his fingers through it, piling it away from his skin. He doesn’t ask him again, waiting for Richie to answer on his own, but Mike has always been the best of them. The most patient.

Stan has never known the definition of patience.

“Richie,” he prods. “You were with Eddie. Where is he? What happened?”

“‘Ee ‘ook ‘m,” Richie says. Sort of.

And Stan speaks Richie fluently, so: “ _Who_ took him?”

Richie exhales loud and shakily, turning his head so he can look at Stan. His eyes are rimmed red which is most likely from his extended stay in the quarry—Stan has to look the same—but it could also be from the emotions warring across his face. “Mrs. K.”

“His _mom?”_ Mike blurts.

“She was here?” Stan asks. “Like, she physically—“ He stops, mouth dry, the ticking of a clock loud in his ear despite the obvious lack of one, which unsettles him. “How did she know he was… I thought he sent her to Portland.”

“He did,” Richie says ( _read: whines)_. “I was there when she left. She was… she hasn’t even been gone that long, which means she didn’t make it that far, and she was with them all.” He waves their clasped hands. “Patrick and Criss and Bowers—“

“ _What?”_ Mike interrupts, loud and incredulous. “You’re telling me she was willingly with—after the shit they did to us? To _Eddie?”_

Richie nods, resting his forehead on his knee. “You know she’s never given a shit about him,” he replies. “She only wants to micromanage everything about him, make him depend on her for the rest of his life. She doesn’t need the magic not to see; she does it on her own. She didn’t even _care_ that Bowers was going to drug him, all that mattered was getting him away from me. Us. A fucking _life.”_

“Woah, woah, woah, back it up,” Stan says, snapping at his arm with their clasped hands. “Bowers _drugged him?”_

“I—I was distracted by Patrick, I wasn’t fast enough, and he just—it all happened so quickly, and Patrick was going to…” Richie talks without taking a breath, face growing redder by the second, and then he just—stops.

Stan peers into his face, frowning, and dislikes the way Richie thanks him again, as if Stan had a choice. As if he’d do anything else.

Richie swallows roughly, rubbing at an eye with the heel of his palm. “I… _we_ just got him back and I told him—“

Stan sighs noisily. “You quoted _Africa_ at him, didn’t you?”

“He quoted it back,” Richie mutters.

“There’s no way you could’ve taken them all on,” Mike says gently. “We always just barely held our own when we were together.”

“I shouldn’t have taken him there, I shouldn’t have separated us,” Richie replies. “We knew things were bad, we had things to _do,_ and I was selfish and I wanted—I don’t know what’s going to happen when this is all… I just wanted more time, I wanted him to _know,_ before he—“

“Pity party over,” Stan snaps, raising his voice over Richie’s ramblings. There’s only so much of it he can allow, and he’s already reached his lifetime quota. And, if he’s honest, there’s no reason for it. “That’s not how this story ends.”

“You don’t know what I was going to say.”

“Don’t tell me what I do and don’t know,” Stan retorts stiffly, because he doesn’t know. Or. He _shouldn’t,_ but Richie’s voice sounds around him like he’s still speaking, which he isn’t. His mouth is closed, his dumb overbite—really his dentist father should get him braces, right, for image alone—digging his two front teeth into his bottom lip.

But there he goes anyway. Stan would recognize that voice anywhere, even if it’d been twenty-seven years since he heard it (which he hopes will never happen, and if you tell Richie he thought that, you’re dead, okay?).

 _I wanted him to know before he disappears again._ A brief hesitation, because Richie thinks he’s not very forthcoming with his feelings when he’s the most in tune with his emotions out of all of them. _Before I lose him all over._

“He is not going to disappear,” Stan says firmly. “We aren’t going to lose him.” He blinks, Richie and Mike in front of him, and blinks again, their bodies and the Barrens moving to the foreground of his mind, blurred, as he sees something else.

A future, maybe.

Eddie’s there.

A past?

 _You’ve always known, Stanley Uris,_ not-Richie’s voice whispers. It’s one he’s familiar with, but it’s not the clown. He’ll never forget the way that sounded, like nails on a chalkboard but worse. _You’re already there._

“We will if we keep sitting here,” Richie snaps, blotchy red spots in the middle of his cheeks. He looks like a ragdoll. “We have to go. We have to—we’re running out of time.”

Stan looks into the future, or the past, or the present, watches all these versions of them doing all these different things. He can’t make heads or tails of the what, the where, the when, but one thing is for certain: they are all together. All seven.

“What _is_ time anyway?” he asks.

“What is… just a thing we’re _wasting,”_ Richie replies shrilly. “What’s the matter with you? _What is time?_ Did you lose brain cells down there?” He boxes the side of Stan’s head with a forearm.

Stan presses his palm into Richie’s face, shoving him back, and says, “I did _now_ from that, so _thanks,_ Richard.”

“Yeah, no problem, cinnamon bun.”

“Okay, soggy string bean.” Stan blurts it out before he has even the tiniest bit of control over his mouth. His brain reels. The hallucinations—that’s what they must be, from the amount of time he spent underwater, probably unaware he was drowning—dissipate as he focuses on this Richie, damp and gross and blind in front of him.

Richie’s jaw drops, his eyes widening in such comical slow motion, and then he’s throwing himself at Stan, wrapping his arms and his legs around him like some sort of friendly octopus or something. He latches. He clings. He buries his face in Stan’s neck, laughs so hard Stan feels his teeth catch on his collarbone, and then, well, in true Richie fashion, he cries.

Stan pats his back. Lets his warm, salty tears drip down and settle in the dip of his shoulder. His clothes are nothing but water, Stan’s hands coming back slick. He can’t look or feel any better himself, and the feel of two sets of clothes, two bodies this wet against each other, makes him more uncomfortable than he’d like. Every nerve ending inside of him screams for him to pry Richie off of him, but the big Friendship part negates that.

Instead, he flits his gaze to Mike, who watches them both with that little half-smile of his. He’s endeared. He loves them; he’s never been shy in saying so, and he especially loves when they love each other. Fuck the rules of masculinity. Mike Hanlon does not bother with trivial things like that. Never has.

Probably why Stan likes him so much. For someone who gets shit on so much for who he is, he never lets it stop him from being the best version of himself he can. _And that is a road we do not need to go down,_ Stan thinks, _please do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars, thanks, bye._

Mike ruffles Stan’s hair and then Richie’s. “When’s the last time you slept, Rich?”

“I’unno,” Richie says in Stan’s skin, words muffled from that and his now clogged nose. Stan doesn’t want to know how much snot has ended up on his neck. “Two days ago?”

“Alright,” Mike says. “That’s not ideal, especially if we need to fight a killer clown in the next—do we have a time frame?”

“Nope,” Stan says, “but sooner rather than later.”

Richie pulls away from him. “Okay, man, love the intensity, but never say anything like that ever again.”

“I am very passionate about pest control,” Stan says. “Apologies for upsetting you.”

“I wasn’t… it was just weird,” Richie corrects. “Didn’t sound like you. Sounded…”

“All-knowing,” Mike provides, dip in his brow as he frowns.

Stan nods. “I do know everything. I’m a know-it-all, we’ve established that.” He nudges Richie into a position that is not on top of him, not really caring where he ends up, and stands himself. “There’s a bunch of stuff we have to do before we even _think_ about going to that house again, which—and I’d like this put on the record—I do not want to step foot in that death trap again, but I will do it for you.” He directs that towards Richie, a grand statement that makes him itchy. “And I will also do it for Eddie, and Bill, and the rest of the kids who were eaten because we live in this shitty town at a very inconvenient time.”

“Excellent speech.” Richie nods. “Very motivating. I’m a fan.”

“Please shut up for one second. _Please._ I beg.”

Richie drops his head solemnly, almost like he’s about to pray.

“So, obviously we have to find the others,” Stan rattles off, “and we need to get Richie his other pair of glasses, and we _really_ need to hammer home what fears of ours It will try to trick us with. We’re not getting caught in that again. We should be able to walk in, see it as it is—a fucking _clown—_ and walk out.”

“Very smart, man, good job,” Mike praises. “We can reconvene at Richie’s, if that’s—?”

“Oh, yeah, sure, who fucking cares,” Richie says. “If my parents are even home, they won’t notice me or us, and if they do, I’ll just… I’ll say it’s a half-day. Parent-teacher conferences.”

Mike tilts his head to the side, just a bit, appraising him. “Wouldn’t they know that? Wouldn’t they go?”

Richie snorts. “I’m a fucking delight,” he says. “I have the highest GPA in that terrible school. They’re not going to contact them unless I’m acting out. It’s whatever.”

“You _do_ act out,” Stan points out.

“I have yet to be caught, mon amie,” Richie replies. “We’re fine. We’re great. We can get some snacks, unhash our deepest, darkest fears—”

“—and you can get some well-deserved rest,” Mike suggests. “You look ready to pass out any second.”

“I am nnnn—” Richie gets to his feet, wobbles like he’s some kind of newborn deer, and almost faceplants. Mike catches him before he can. “I’m fine! I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

“Which will be in the next twenty-four hours if you don’t take care of yourself,” Stan tells him. “I’m not walking into that horror house with you like you’re coming off of some kind of three-day bender. You’ll rest at home.”

“ _Staaaan—”_

“Eddie is going to need you,” Stan reminds him. “You wanna explain to him why you’re dead or should I?”

Richie pouts, hit where it hurts most, and sighs, relenting. “Fine. I’ll lay down while we powwow like we’re some girls at a sleepover, I’m sure I can steal some of Suze’s face masks—”

“—that’s rude to girls at sleepovers,” Mike interrupts. “We talk about shit like this all the time when we stay over each other’s houses.”

“Fine.” Richie pauses, a dramatic flick of his finger. “I’ll lay down while we have our usual chats, then. Happy, Mom?”

Stan forces a smile and shoves Richie at the shoulders. “Ecstatic, son I never wanted.” To Mike, he hisses, “I know it’s in poor taste because of Eddie and all, but I’m drugging him when we get to his house.”

Mike salutes him, loops his arm through Richie’s, and whispers, “I’ll make the hot chocolate.”

“Ooh,” Richie says. “With cinnamon?”

2

Darkness pulses all around him, shadows like goop that twist and flip and squeeze like the stuff inside a lava lamp. He does not know who he is. He does not know where he is.

One thing is for certain: He’s been here before. As eerie as it is, it’s familiar—the lone dripping of water, somewhere to his left; the draft, scorching his skin with ice; the scuttling of feet, or claws, or tentacles in the distance. He knows if he calls out, his voice will sound over and over, distorted and grotesque. Sometimes there is an answer. Confusing. Thought-provoking. A mockery of the question. Other times there is just an echo, a reminder that he is lost, and no one will ever find him, even if they try. His voice bounces against—are these walls? It’s unclear where he is or what he’s encased in. A bubble? A cage? The deep, dark, empty abyss of the underground. The sea. _Space?_

He holds his palms out in front of him, unable to see them, hardly sure they’re there. He wiggles each finger, sees none. When he presses them to his face, his skin is freezing and slimy, almost sticky. One eye flutters shut, stuck for a hair-raising breath. The other follows suit. When he regains control, it’s there, as it always is.

The balloon.

No.

_Balloons._

A bunch of them, specifically, each a different color. A line. A map. A trail.

He goes to the first. Red. It pops once he passes it, loud in his ear. The sound echoes. Something in him deteriorates.

Orange. _Pop._

Yellow. _Pop._

Green. _Pop._

Blue. _Pop._

Purple. _Pop._

Pink. _Pop._

Each gets louder as he goes, a repetition that has his heart racing, his blood pumping, her nerves on edge. He bites his lip, digs nails into his palm, and continues on. He must be strong. He must allow it to pass. It is his duty.

He is _important._

He will help.

He will give them what they need where they lack it, provide a reason, give them strength. He has always been this. He has always held them together.

The balloons go on, colorful like a rainbow. He follows them, lets them pop, lose air, _die,_ over and over, until he emerges at the end of a street.

 _I am here,_ a voice says. _You are not alone._

Rain streams; dark, heavy clouds hover above, practically blocking out the sky. He lets it hit him, raising his face to it, soaking the skin. The rest bounces off of his raincoat, yellow and slick. He does not remember wearing this, but knows this outfit is right. He must always be in it. There is no other way.

It starts now.

The river overflows.

The streets flood.

The Derry Department of Public Works is doing something on these streets, their signs posted up to prevent entrance onto certain roads. He ducks under them, follows the path a paper boat takes—

_Bill made that._

_We call boats sh-she._

_She._

_Thanks, Billy._

He keeps going, doesn’t look back no matter how much he wants to, a last glance at the life he once led, and swallows when the boat falls down the sewer hole.

He knows what’s there, knows what it will do, but his heart still leaps and his knuckles still clench. He feels six, not ten—like he’s never been ten before.

And he hasn’t.

He’s six. He’s _always_ been six.

Everything else was a lie. A joke.

He closes his eyes, sniffs the tears away, and breaks his one rule. This street is so far away he shouldn’t be able to see his house, but when he turns it’s three doors down.

 _A gift,_ the turtle says. He can’t find him. _See him. Say goodbye. He loves you._

He looks at Billy, pressed against the window of his room, watching him down the street. He doesn’t know how close he is. Doesn’t know how far away he will soon become. Bill puts his thumb to the button on the walkie-talkie and says, “Be careful.”

He wants to say he tried. Wants to tell him he knew all the rules, but this has never come up. Who knows how to fight against a clown in the sewer? Their parents only told him about strangers aboveground.

He sniffles. A tear drips from his left eye, then his right, then both, continuous. He looks at Bill—his brother, his best friend, his favorite person.

“I love you,” he says, but Bill can’t hear it.

“I love you,” he says again. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

But then, like he’s been programmed to do so, he walks up to the opening, bends down, and says, squeaky and _scared—_ why had he been so scared of his _brother?_ “Bill’s gonna kill me.”

He stares into the fathomless dark, unable to see a thing, searching for the _S.S. Georgie,_ and jumps back when a pair of yellow eyes appear in the black.

“Hiya, Georgie,” Pennywise says. “What a nice boat. Do you want it back?”

Water rushes around him, drenching his knees, spilling into the sewer. Georgie feels tense, palms pressed to the concrete so hard he feels the imprints of rock. Debris.

“Um, yes, please,” he replies, sounding small, sounding _useless._

It goes as it did, as Georgie was never allowed to forget.

He _is_ small.

He _is_ useless.

 _No,_ the turtle behind him disagrees. _You are anything but. You are so very important to so many people. Do not forget that, even as he tries to take it from you._

Pennywise replies, “You look like a nice boy. I bet you have a lot of friends.”

And Georgie, like before, like word vomit, like he has no control, says, “Three, but my brother’s my best- _best.”_

“Where is he?” Pennywise asks, and normally Georgie tells him he’s in bed, but that is not the case. Pennywise presses on because he’s no idiot. He knows what’s happened, probably what will happen, and also what won’t. He adds, “He’s not here to save you. He’s never here to save you, no matter how many times I let you out. You”—his face elongates—“are”—his teeth multiply, sharpen—“ _mine”_ —and his jaw extends, biting into Georgie’s arm, which does not hurt. Not anymore.

He lets out a cry regardless; it’s never fun to lose your arm, to die of blood loss, to be lost forever. Pennywise sinks into him, revels in it, and rips the arm from the shoulder. Georgie wails, burning, and struggles forward, away from the sewer, shimmying across the street. He makes eye contact with a small turtle hidden in the grass.

 _I am sorry,_ Maturin says. _I promised you wouldn’t be alone. I can take the pain away, if you wish._

“No,” Georgie says. He’s not sure he’s using his mouth, but it doesn’t feel like a thought. His blood spills, quick and fast like a faucet, mixing with the rainwater. “My wish is not for me. It’s for them. Help them. Give them luck. I wish for them to live long, happy lives without It. I know that’s not right, but _please.”_

The turtle cranes its head.

Georgie smells the circus.

Fuck— _he’s allowed to say that; he’s dead—_ he loves the circus.

He pulls himself forward a few more inches, nose full of popcorn and hot dogs and funnel cake, ears full of bells and rides and outrageous announcer voices—and then something wraps around his leg and pulls him back. He’s dragged across the street, a rash forming where his clothes are rucked up to his armpits, and the last thing he ever says is “ _BILLY!”_

(The last thing he says in every single lifetime is _Billy._ It’s just... sometimes he gets to say it differently.)

The world darkens for a beat. His pain dulls.

When he opens his eyes once more, Pennywise’s face is millimeters from his, pupils spinning in different directions, face paint cracked and a dent in the middle of his forehead, skin and makeup shedding from his skull. His red lips part, drool dripping from his teeth. Georgie tries to shift backwards, away, but he’s wrapped in what feels like a tight vacuum, keeping him in place.

“I missed you,” Pennywise says, deranged. Unhinged. “Time to float.”

Georgie rises up, higher and higher into the vortex. His mind becomes increasingly blank the more he rises except for one tiny observation: _Pennywise seems frightened._

3

There are tentacles around him, long and slimy, suction-cupped to his skin. It’s stifling: hot, cold—one extreme after the other. He can’t move, can’t feel the pieces of him trapped beneath the arms, but he knows he’s real. He’s alive, beating heart and rushing blood and all. It’s weirdly surprising.

He cannot break free of the hold, though he hears the world around him. Feels it, too, rough and bumpy and suffocating.

His jaw is locked.

His ears are ringing.

His body feels heavy.

A lot of bad things have happened to him, but this is the most scared he’s ever been. He can’t _move._ His tongue is too big for his mouth, sticking to the roof of it, curling back to slither down his throat. There’s a stinging clearness in his nostrils, a numbness in his lips, and he physically has to _think_ about breathing to make sure he does it. If he doesn’t, he thinks he’ll forget to. He thinks he’ll die. He thinks those tentacles will wriggle right down his throat and rip him apart from the inside.

His right arm burns, starting off at a dull sting by the soft skin of his inner elbow. It pulses as it expands to encompass his whole arm, shoulder to fingers, a stinging, shooting pain. It feels sluggish, like it’s not real, it’s not there, and he can’t lift it.

But it hurts.

It hurts, it hurts, _it—_

_Get. Up._

He rises with a shuddering gasp, head spinning, aching with the sudden rush of blood. He swallows the rising churn of nausea, eyes still squeezed shut to fight it off, and tries to remember the breathing exercises he’d learned when he didn’t want to use his inhaler. His free hand, uninjured, props himself up, then grips his other side, squeezing, digging his nails in— _unfeeling._

A sound makes him look, gaze unfocused, the dark, muted colors of the kitchen blurring in front of him. It’s all old-timey yellow, and black, either from dirt or choice, aging and deteriorating. He feels rather than sees the door across from him swing open, a fridge with no shelves, and a contortionist emerges, slow and eerily. First there’s a hand, and then the rest of the body unfolds, a clown in ratty clothes twisting into shape, cracking joints and snapping limbs in place until it’s towering over him, eight feet fall and _gigantic._

It shakes itself out like some kind of dog, white face, wet mouth, thinning red hair. It’s voice is a horrifying sing-song when it says, “Time to _float.”_

The clown does some kind of jig—is it a dance? What _is it?—_ and gets closer, closer, closer. It’s on him in a flash, gripping his face and mocking him, hot, disgusting breath fanning over him.

His cheeks are squeezed so hard blood bursts at his tongue, beneath his lip, and anywhere else his teeth clash against.

“Tasty, tasty, beautiful fear,” the clown coos, sniffing enthusiastically at him, nosing the line of his jaw. It pulls back, opening its mouth with a snap, face elongating, saliva sliding down the cracks in its face, teeth growing, sharpening, multiplying.

It moves to strike—teething at a wrist, sniffing the pulse, and surges to latch teeth to temple, to jaw, to—

The teeth brush against his face, stinging like scraped knees or palms after falling off a bike, but then they’re gone, the wet mouth and nose back at the throb of his heartbeat. They press there, listening, feeling.

But it will not hear anything other than a steady, even thrum. There is hesitance now in the way the clown raises its eyes, unnatural in color, both menacing and wary. It tries to move past this development, widening its mouth, but the teeth begin to retract and the jaw slowly fits back into place, like something has gotten in the way.

Like something has changed.

And something has.

This time, he is not afraid.

This time, Eddie Kaspbrak is the threat.

4

Stan’s cutting an apple across from him, thumb against the blade of the knife, the rest of his fingers wrapped around the bottom.

Richie turns his head into his pillow, watching him blearily, and says, “You chew like a hamster.”

“Fuck off, you can’t see a thing,” Stan replies, chewing like a hamster.

“I can see you’re using my mom’s good knife to cut a Granny Smith apple,” Richie retorts. “She only takes that silverware out on special occasions.”

“This is a special occasion,” Stan replies. He cuts another piece, thin and efficient. “I'm going to slit a clown's throat today. I’ve been testing each one to see which will do the worst job.” He indicates with the tip to Richie’s desk. Multiple plates hold piles of apple slices; it looks like the ladies’ luncheon Richie walked into two months ago, picking up his mom because she drank too much spiked cider.

He sniffs. “The worst? Don’t you want the one that does the best?”

“No,” Stan says definitively. “I want It to suffer.” His voice becomes strange—contemplative yet knowing, aware yet questioning. “I just have to find the right knife.” He sighs, tosses this one to the side carelessly. “Not this one. Doesn’t cut right.”

Richie blinks, pushing himself up to his elbows, and then, with a groan, all the way. “How long have you been doing that?”

Stan plucks another from the box at his feet. It’s longer than the last, with a golden handle. A different set. Why does his mom have so many? “How long have you been asleep?” he asks, more to himself than Richie. He checks his watch. “Four hours? Could be five.”

“We have enough knives to—did you say I’ve been _sleeping?”_

“Oh, yeah.” Stan digs this knife into the other side of the apple. “You had some fits earlier, so I think it’s been four hours. You should try to get some more.”

“ _I’ve been sleeping?!”_ Richie repeats, voice growing embarrassingly shrill and loud. He and his sister can sound remarkably similar when they’re upset; he gets an unwelcome flashback to her getting grounded for stealing their dad’s vodka when she was fifteen. “I’ve been… is this my _bed?_ Are those—are we in _my house?!”_

“Yes, yes, and we’ve established that. I’m using your mom’s knives. You have four sets of silverware, but I’ve been here for birthdays and holidays and I’ve never seen any of these, so what’s the point?”

Richie wants to answer that but _can’t,_ because there is no logical answer, and scrambles for his glasses at his bedside table. He shoves them on his face, the pair that pinch at his ears, and takes in his bedroom. Very real, very messy: posters cover up every inch of the wall, bits of blue paint peeking where there’s space; movie and concert tickets are pinned to the board above his desk because he’s a sentimental piece of shit; a collection of comic books intermingle with a bunch of Bev’s magazines on the floor by his laundry basket. His shoes are thrown all over the place. The sweatshirt he’d been wearing earlier is folded carefully over the chair Stan’s sitting on. His backpack is in the corner, inexplicably turned inside out. This is it, alright. This is his room.

“They’re for, like, when my dad invites other dentists over, or, like, my pretentious family from New York,” Richie replies. “What’d you do to me?”

Stan lets out a soft _ouch_ and sucks his finger into his mouth. That knife goes in the reject pile too. “Who says I did anything to you?”

“Everyone else just lets me run myself ragged,” Richie says. He sounds so self-aware it’s uncomfortable, but he knows how his friends treat him. “You’re the only one who cares about my well-being.”

“False. Mike does, too, and you know Ben would put up more of a fight if you didn’t tease him constantly.” Stan weighs a blade. “No. Too heavy.” Puts it aside. “You literally haven’t slept. You’ve almost drowned twice, and your body looks like it went through a woodchipper. You needed to sleep or else It would’ve destroyed you first thing. So you’re in bed.”

 _There’s no time for that._ “But I don’t remember going to sleep,” Richie says.

“Yeah, that’s because Mike made everyone hot chocolate and I put a Benadryl in yours. They always knock you out.”

Richie blinks, feeling his jaw drop, and clutches the sheet at his waist with a tight fist. “You— _drugged me?_ That’s like… that’s completely uncalled—that’s what—“ _That’s what they did to Eddie to get him away from me._ “What the _fuck,_ man.”

“You were putting up a fight, _bro,_ ” Stan retorts, a snippy emphasis towards the end. “I am—I’m _worried_ about you, alright? You think I’m just gonna let you run straight first into something that wants to kill us like that? Mike and I dragged you home.”

“But Eddie—“

“—is _fine,”_ Stan says.

But how can he know that? He didn’t see… he doesn’t _know…_ the way Eddie panicked as his mother spoke, the way he sagged when Bowers injected him, the way he tripped over his own feet, pulled along… how he turned to look at Richie and Richie felt like… he felt—

His heart tugged to the bottom of his stomach and promptly burst into pieces. He felt like this was it. Like it was _over._ His last look at Eddie was him with glassy eyes and pink cheeks and a hard, bruising grip on his elbow. It felt remarkably like déjà vu.

“He’s fine,” Stan repeats. “Something hap… Bill’s getting him, and when Bill gets him, he’ll be fine.”

 _Bill?_ Richie thinks snottily, then immediately discards the thought, wetting his lips. Swallowing. “We’re not supposed to separate.”

“It’s okay right now.” Stan eats this piece of apple, but still puts the knife aside. He doesn’t take another even though his box has about five more.

“How do you know that?” Discomfort _(fear)_ creeps and crawls in Richie’s belly, settling in his bones. “How can you sound so sure?”

Stan’s mouth quirks oddly. “Because I know everything, remember?”

For the first time, Richie really wonders if he does. He squints at him like he’s just seeing him. Like they’ve never met. Like Richie is five again and trying to determine if the kid with the shirt with the pressed collar adamantly refusing to play in the sandbox is worth it.

He is, but you already know that.

“You killed Patrick Hockstetter,” Richie says softly as the memory comes back.

“Mhm.” Stan wipes his palms on his pants. He’s wearing a pair of Richie’s sweatpants; they’re baggy and loose and cover his feet.

“How’s that… are you… do you wanna talk about it?”

“No,” Stan replies. “I want to find the knife I saw—“

“The knife you _saw?”_

Stan raises his eyebrows, staring at him blankly, purses his lips, and asks, “You okay? You were doing a lot of weird shit in your sleep.”

“You saw a kn—one of _my—“_ Richie pauses. Considers his last sentence. Says, “What was I doing?”

“Yelling, kicking. You gave Mike a bloody nose.”

“I did what?” Richie asks. Mike is, like, six-foot- _fucking-_ four and built like a linebacker. Richie may be tall, but he’s got the muscles of a toddler. “Are you fucking with me?”

Stan shakes his head. “You fell asleep pretty quick and then when he went to bring you up here, you just kneed him in the face. He’s fine.”

“I… I don’t remember what I dreamt about,” Richie admits. “Maybe it was just the adrenaline still coursing through me.”

But that’s not exactly the case. He remembers a darkness with a jello-like consistency, his body submerged in the middle, stuck. There was a menacing, mocking laugh, words sung to him like a nursery rhyme though there is no easy calmness to them. Something like _ring around the rosie,_ but it was all… _I know your secret, your dirty little secret,_ which isn’t terrifying anymore, but what is… what’s the worst was the way it ended, stark and harsh. _And I know exactly how to hurt you._

(Eddie screaming. Eddie screaming _for_ him.)

“You were talking about doors,” Stan says softly. “You couldn’t find the one to Eddie. You kept—you kept thrashing and shrieking and…” Stan looks down at his fingers. “You cried a lot.”

 _Pick a door,_ Richie remembers. Three of them were presented before him: _NOT SCARY AT ALL, SCARY, VERY SCARY._ He’d felt thirteen, wearing his dumbass Freese’s shirt and pulling knob after knob to get to Eddie’s screaming, Bill standing behind him, face pale, not believing.

Like always, he chose the wrong one. Over and over, he chooses the wrong one. Behind each was an Eddie he’d never forget: armless, blood gushing from a hole at his shoulder; hunched over himself, spineless, a gaping hole in chest; and the worst of all, a completely healthy, a completely _alive_ version of Eddie calling him all the names Bowers and Greta and the scumbags of Derry call Richie on a daily basis. He wonders which part of this dream made him cry in real life. They’re all equally awful.

“Yeah,” Richie replies. “It’s a thing I do.”

“The doors aren’t real,” Stan tells him. “They’re just a figment of your imagination, a manifestation of your fears for It to take hold of. They’re not real, whatever you see. They do not come to pass.”

“Why the _fuck_ do you sound like that?”

“Like what? I sound like nothing.” Stan picks up another knife; a flash of memory bursts at Richie’s temple: Stan, sunburnt at his nose and the tips of his ears, pretending to dig a shard of glass into his wrist. He’d sounded like this too, at thirteen, omniscient, and he’d played it off then too.

“You—“ Richie watches him prick a finger, _on fucking purpose,_ and surges forward to grab the thing. “You are _insane,”_ he snaps. “You sound like fuckin’ Gandalf and are weighing knives like you’re about to get married or some shit and the weight of the cutlery will make or break the—what the fuck is wrong with you? Why’d you send _Bill_ to Eddie? Why not _me?_ Why am I in fucking _bed?_ Don’t touch that goddamn box.”

A triple knock at the door grabs Richie’s attention. Mike stands there, tall and beautiful; he looks incredibly happy to see Richie up and functioning. “Because that’s what’s supposed to happen,” he says. “It’s what the magic wants.”

“No,” Richie replies immediately, and much harsher than he intended. “It doesn’t. I asked it—“ He feels all of four when he snaps, “It’s _mine.”_

Mike’s mouth does this thing Richie doesn’t like—twitches then curves downward on one side, like he feels… like he’s pitying him, or like, he _knows_ something Richie doesn’t. “The magic is not yours to own,” he says. “It belongs to no one but itself.”

“It belongs to whoever uses it,” Richie says shortly. “For whoever Wishes for it.”

Mike’s face twists again. “Yeah, about that…”

Stan winces. Richie watches the movement curiously, realizing there are a lot more blanks in his memory than he originally thought. He was vomiting on the shore of the quarry, mind reeling, mind paused, circulating through, like, three things he was certainly aware of ( _Eddie, Stan, I am always almost dying)_ and then… this.

What else could he possibly have missed out on? Is time even real? Has it _really_ been four hours? Has it been four years?

Where’s Eddie? Where’s Bill? Where are Ben and Bev?

Heart pounding in his ears and blood thrumming in his veins, he blurts, “What’s going on?”

“I found some stuff when I was at my house,” Mike says. “Stuff of my dad’s. Come to the basement. We can fill you in. Ben got pizza.”

“We’re eating pizza at a time like this?” Richie asks, and then, “Your dad?”

“Yeah.” Mike quirks a brow. “We gotta eat, don’t we?”

“This isn’t a _party,”_ Richie grumbles.

“We haven’t had pizza parties since grade six,” Stan retorts. “We’re just eating.”

“And it’s, uh, kind of a party,” Mike replies sheepishly. “Your mom thinks we’re all together to play Monopoly, so she forked over the cash for a bunch of pies.”

“ _Monopoly?”_ Richie bleats.

Mike laughs, dry but still full of humor. “It’s the first thing Bev pulled from the closet. Ben already has Park Avenue.”

“You’re shitting me,” Stan says. “ _Already?_ Why does this always happen?”

“He’s a remarkable strategist,” Mike provides, which Richie isn’t sure is right but who is he to doubt Ben’s prowess at board games? _Board games they shouldn’t be playing, by the way._

“He’s a cheat, is what he is,” Stan mutters. “We should get down there before she worries about how long you’ve decided to quote-unquote _relax.”_

Richie snorts. “She doesn’t care what I do.”

“That’s wrong,” Stan disagrees. His hand hovers over the box again, light reflecting off the sharp metal of the remaining knives, and pauses. “These aren’t right.”

“No,” Mike says. “They aren’t. You know they aren’t.”

“I mean, I don’t _know_ that,” Stan retorts.

Mike fixes him with a look—one that makes Richie feel like he’s interfering and _he’s_ not the one interfering. They _are._ With the pizza and the fucking Monopoly and this weird knife hunt. Eddie is gone _again,_ and they sent _Bill,_ who sometimes gets distracted and takes an hour to get somewhere because he felt like _feeling the wind on his face_ or something truly fucking stupid.

 _But it wasn’t when Eddie did it,_ he thinks.

They took forever to get to town, petting stray cats and dogs and analyzing trees and stopping to smell the fucking _roses._ It was cute then. It mattered a lot. _Eddie_ matters— _present_ tense, note that fucking down—and they’re not helping him with all of this shit. Who _cares_ if Ben is a consistent cheater at Monopoly? They’ve known that for years! He blatantly ignores the _Go Straight To Jail_ card!

“But you do,” Mike says, like no time has passed. Like Richie hasn’t spiraled so far into his mind he’s somehow ended up at the bottom of his gut, drowning in a mish-mosh of fears and annoyances. “You know, Stan. You saw. It’s not you.”

“I don’t want it to be him.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Mike reasons, like they’ve discussed it. “You saw multiple things. Multiple ways. Don’t fixate on a knife, of all things.”

“But if I fixate on a knife then he doesn’t—“

“—what the hell do you mean _saw multiple things?”_ Richie’s voice rises several octaves, breaking somewhere between _hell_ and _multiple,_ like he’s going through puberty all over again. It’s loud and it’s pitchy and it must be heard by everyone across the world in China, and most certainly his _mother,_ who apparently _cares_ about him. “What does that mean? What are you keeping from me? Why are you and Mike standing there like you’re my parents and you’re about to tell me you’re getting a divorce and you’ll always love me but it’s just not the same anymore?”

Mike blinks. “Are your parents getting divorced, Rich?”

Richie returns the stupid gesture, lashes hitting the glass of his lenses, getting caught. “No, of course not, they’re gross and in love,” he says, “but you and Stan are apparently.”

“I wasn’t aware we got married,” Stan says dryly. “Was it a good proposal?”

“I wouldn’t say yes to something mediocre.”

“Oh, _I_ proposed?”

“You love to be in control, so obviously,” Mike says. “I bet the cake was good.”

“A fancy variation of carrot,” Stan replies, “the only kind I like.”

“Guys,” Richie whines. This game of deliberate ignorance is only fun when he plays it, and when it’s appropriate. Richie knows how to swing it, how to flip the switch on the tension, turn a charged atmosphere into something light and stupid. Being on the other end of it… no wonder they want to fucking kill him every other hour.

 _And they’re not even good at it!_ He deserves to throttle them for that alone.

“For five seconds please just be serious and tell me what I missed while you fucking _drugged me,”_ he orders.

Stan lifts his head, mouth pinched like he’s about to respond, and Richie can hear his voice in his ear, all _just be serious, really, Richie?_ But what Stan says next is so baffling he’s not sure he’s even awake.

“When I went to save you,” Stan says, ticking off the words particularly and stiffly, “I got attacked by It. I saw time.”

Richie sticks his pinky in his ear, wriggles it around, and expects to see a huge wad of wax stuck to it when he pulls it back out. It’s not, just dirt caked around his knuckle and blood dried under the nail. _So my hearing is not impaired, but—_

“Father Time Uris,” he jokes feebly, because _what?_

“Tell him the rest,” Mike prods.

Richie bites back a mean retort, doesn’t even think it, and waits, teeth gritted and blankets bundled in his hands. _I saw time,_ he thinks. _What does that even mean?_

Stan sighs, running a hand (shaky) through his hair, dried curls matted to his skull, frizzing in a way that would drive him insane if he saw them. “I don’t think he’s in the right state of mind for—”

“—you can’t protect Richie from everything—”

“—but I _can,_ ” Stan snaps, indicating with open palms at the knives around them, like he’s about to perform some kind of ritual with sharp edges and soft, supple skin. Like they’re about to be blood brothers again. Stan’s own hands, available to Richie now, look bruised and torn, like he’d been fighting something off.

 _I got attacked by It,_ he’d said. _When I went to save you._

“That fucker tried to drown you,” Richie says fiercely. Stan hates spiders, small spaces, things that don’t make sense, and is deathly afraid of drowning even though he’s the best swimmer in all of Derry. He’s literally on the swim team.

“Doesn’t matter,” Stan says to Richie. To Mike, he replies, “He’s my best friend. You think I won’t do everything in my power to protect him?”

“Of course not,” Mike says, “but at what cost, Stan? You can’t… if you…”

“I’m not the weakest link,” Stan forces out. “I _will not—_ I would never act like that, and I won’t—”

“I never said you were—that was you at _thirteen._ I know who you are. I know what you’ll do, but there has to be another way to do this, t…”

 _Hey,_ Richie wants to ask, but he can’t find the words. Can’t find his mouth. _What’s a panic attack feel like?_

Richie’s vision goes in and out, focused and then not. His heart pounds erratically, in his chest and then his throat and then his tongue. There’s a sharp tingling sensation in his mouth, running down the lengths of his arms. He can’t feel his hands. Does he have hands? Someone please just… somebody… _at what cost, Stan?_

 _What does that mean? Why does Stan owe someone money? Why is Stan the one doing the costing? Why is it_ Stan?

Richie blinks, and can’t open his eyes. His lower lip trembles; his stomach churns; there’s a brief, horrifying moment where he doesn’t remember how to breathe… and then there’s a longer, scarier moment where he’s not sure they notice him failing to act like a normal human. He’s not sure what’s worse. He tells his body to nut up or shut up—it wants to do the latter—and focuses on moving the skin around his mouth, which tingles.

“Stop talking in fragments,” he bursts out, a choked whisper. It takes a lot out of him, their cryptic sentences creating scenarios in his mind that he can’t seem to understand. They turn into something they can’t possibly be. _At what cost, Stan?_

Mike and Stan stare at each other, long and tense. It’s like a fucking family dinner where Richie’s report card has just come in and he’s gotten straight As but every teacher says he is _not_ a pleasure in class, and _can he keep his voice down and learn to speak when called on?_ Why are Stan and Mike his parents? Why does he feel so small, with no voice, no opinion of his own? Why won’t anyone answer him?

He deserves to know. This is his life. His friends. His… his Eddie. His perpetual fuck-up. To stand there like this, knowing shit, trying to keep it from him—it’s not fucking fair. He’s part of it, too, even if he wasn’t there for the It-attack or the rest of it. They drugged him! They kept him from saving Eddie, and who knows what’s happening to him, what’s already happened? What if he’s forgotten again? What if that was all the time he’s allowed to have? What if they lose Bill, too, who is on his way to get him? Richie fucking _fed_ Bill to It, just like he’d been provoked to do, and he hadn’t intended it. He hadn’t made the decision. It wasn’t him, and it still happened. It wasn’t him, it wasn’t him, it—

_It wasn’t him!_

His hands tingle even worse, numbness spreading to his fingers. He curls in on himself, mind a whirlwind, stomach in knots, breath shallow and fast. He’s going to cry, _Jesus Christ,_ he’s going to _cry,_ and this is all his fault and he’ll never see Bill or Eddie again and he can’t get rid of this promise or this scar and he’ll remember what a terrible friend he is for the rest of his life and _oh my god what if everyone dies and it’s his fault and he’s all alone and they’re… and he’s—_

“Richie!” He hears Mike exclaim, then footsteps, then the warmth of Mike’s overall being, sitting at the edge of the mattress.

But even Mike’s soothing company is not enough to calm Richie down, to bring him back, and he stutters around a breath, feels them clog his throat, stuck in the middle there. He coughs, trying to force them out, clawing at the sticky skin between his collarbones, nails digging desperately like he can rip the breath from him like he’s some kind of triage doctor, and he thinks—he thinks he might—

There’s a flash of light, bright and hot, exploding within him, and a breath tears from Richie’s chest.

An inky black remains once the blinding white dissipates, curling along the edges of Richie’s room. He can feel it brush against the back of his neck, soothing and cool, though he’s not sure if it’s benevolent or not. _Does it matter?_

“Yeah, he’s not in the right mind for this,” Stan says dryly. It’s the first thing Richie can hear besides the roaring in his ears, the irritating and incessant dripping of water, and what sounds like his own name being called over and over. _Richie! Richie! Richie! RichieRichieRichieRichieRichie!_

_RICHIE!_

“We’re running out of time,” Mike replies. He turns to Richie head-on, and his person is glowing, golden, familiar and safe. Richie trusts him. “When Stan went into the quarry to get you, he was confronted with the Deadlights.”

Richie’s voice does not sound his own when he asks, “What are the Deadlights?”

“They represent all facets of time,” Mike replies.

“I saw the present, the past, the future. Timelines of what has happened, what could happen, and what will happen. Different versions of ourselves. I saw everything.” Stan’s voice rises in pitch, like it does when he’s nervous. Richie hates that things make Stan nervous.

“Were you supposed to see them?”

“I don’t know,” Stan admits. “So much was happening, and they were so enticing, like they could pull me in if I believed what I saw was real.”

Richie swallows. “You didn’t?”

“No,” Stan says, quietly proud. “They can’t show me what I already know. I know you guys. I can’t be tricked with caricatures of the people I love.”

 _But I can,_ Richie thinks. The Eddie at the clubhouse—he thought it was him. _No,_ he reasons with himself angrily. _It was a mean trick because you wanted it to be him. You knew almost immediately when it wasn’t. You can’t be tricked either._

Still, he feels a sharp tug at his stomach, a disappointment in himself. He doesn’t dwell on it, not now, and asks, even though it makes that hole inside of him expand, “What’d you see?”

Stan’s face loses all color, making him whiter than a ghost, if possible, and he wipes his palms over his cheeks eight times in a row. An even number to calm himself down. Richie counts. He’s surprised he doesn’t make it to ten. Stan loves the number ten.

He opens his mouth, his jaw giving an audible click.

Mike keeps his gaze resolutely on Richie.

Richie feels his heart race again. _Is time moving slowly on purpose?_

And then Stan says, “Eddie dies,” and Richie does not think he hears him.

And then Stan says, “Eddie dies,” and Richie can’t breathe again.

And then Stan says, “Eddie dies,” and Richie thinks he warbles out _No,_ definitive and with no room for argument, but he’s not sure it can be heard over the rush of bile and the gag of vomit that now covers his lap.

“I should’ve brought a bucket,” Mike says, reaching over to ball up the sheets.

5

Bill tugs his scarf tighter around his neck even though it makes him feel suffocated. The bite of the wind is colder than he anticipated, and it makes the walk a little worse for wear, but nothing beats watching his baby brother _disappear_ right in front of him.

 _I love you, Billy._ He can’t get it out of his head. Can’t shake the accountability. The overpowering drive that this is _his_ fault and it’s _always_ been his fault, and if he’d just gone outside in the rain to play boats with Georgie no one would be dead, or missing, or shaking with fucking fear back at Richie’s house. It all comes down to that: Bill Denbrough fucks everything up, and everyone else deals with his consequences.

If only he could learn to take more responsibility for his actions. If he could just be the person everyone thinks he is. A good son, brother, and friend. Someone who deserves to be looked up to, not someone who takes things when they’re good and tears them apart. He can’t even remember the last time he was happy or the last time any of his _friends_ were happy.

He tore away from the people who cared about him, forgot about his best fucking friend, and lost his brother all over again. Does it _ever_ get better for Bill? Does he ever get to a point where things don’t fucking suck?

_Yes, Bill. In seven years, you’ll meet the love of your life. In seven years, you’ll be able to look back at this as a traumatic experience, something that shaped you, and turn it into a worldwide best seller, a movie deal, and an entire park at Universal. Times are hard now, but they won’t always be. You will make it out, and you’ll be happy._

Bill stops, the voice familiar and loud in his ears, and looks around as if to find the person talking to him. It sounds like a friend. Like Mike or Stan, the Loser voices of reason.

But there’s no one there, which is—it’s not _weird,_ considering, but it is odd. It’s midday. The streets should be crawling, right? He checks his watch, but it’s fritzed; the minute hand ticks between the five and the six and the second hand spins like a top, round and round and round, but time never moves. Just flickers.

The world is quiet.

The world is cold.

The world is— _you weren’t really sick, were you?—_ the world is angry.

“Georgie?” Bill blurts, twisting in a circle. That’s his brother. That’s his… that’s Georgie. Maybe he’s not… maybe the disappearing act was just—“ _Georgie!”_

The wind picks up, a tornado swirling around him, keeping him rooted in place. Leaves obscure his vision, then tiny paper boats and ripped pieces of yellow raincoats. Puzzles of dinosaurs and tiny turtle figurines almost whack him in the face. He bats away a beat-up walkie talkie, his stuttering voice asking for his brother to come back upstairs. Angry drizzles of rain come straight at his face, drenching him, and Bill has this crazy idea to click his heels three times and say, “There’s no place like home.”

But home is not home, and there’s no place for him to go again that would make him feel safe and wanted and whole. So… really… there _is_ no place like home; Dorothy just got it wrong.

“Billy!” He hears him again, a shrill shriek borne from unadulterated terror, and Bill’s moving before he can think, moving _away_ from something he needs to do and _towards_ something worse, but he’s got no mind for that.

He trips over his own feet, tumbling to the ground and scraping his palms. The ground is wet, covered in puddles— _but it hasn’t rained?—_ and he slips getting back up. Blood smears his hands, runs down his wrists, and slips beneath his sleeves. Bits of road and rubble pepper the rest of his skin, leaving indentations—or they would, if he bothered to wipe his hands free. He doesn’t, just succumbs to the injuries, and continues down the street, following the flow of water by the curb.

_Bill, it’s not raining._

“Billy!”

“I’m coming,” he gasps out, skidding the corner of Witcham and Jackson. He hits his knee against the post of the street sign.

_It’s not raining._

Bill pulls his hood up, sees a figure in the distance, small and bright, and picks up speed. Rain pelts against his back like golf balls. It _hurts,_ leaves bruises probably, but he keeps going.

“ _Billy!”_

“No, please,” he begs. “Not again. I’m here. I’m here this time.”

_Bill._

“You don’t get to take him!”

Bill collides with the body, though the force times mass times whatever he’s learning in school does not knock him over. He grabs Georgie by the arm, pulling him back, pulling him _away,_ and checks the sewer drain. Nothing.

Finally fucking nothing.

_Bill._

“C’mon,” he says to Georgie, “we have to get you outta here. I don’t know why you’d come back here, but weird things are happening and we have to get to Ed—“

Georgie turns.

Bill swallows the half-shriek of horror, of _despair_ , that threatens to take over. Georgie’s wet, moldy and gray, and half his face is decayed. Skin falls from his skull in ripped pieces, old and shriveling. His one eye is yellow and twisted in the wrong direction, a maggot crawling in and out of the socket. His jaw is prominently on display when he smiles, the same one he always aims at Bill—loving, trusting, brotherly… but this time with just a little bit of evil—and the inside of his mouth is dark and dead, filled with bugs wriggling along the bone.

This is his brother ( _no, it’s not),_ and he’s not going to leave him ( _you have to),_ not again ( _it’s not your brother)._

“Billy!” Georgie’s voice is small and innocent, excited to see him, but the expression in his one good eye speaks otherwise. “You made it! I always knew you would! Now we can float like my boat!”

“We can what?” Bill asks. “We have to leave here, George.”

Georgie shakes his head. “We can’t,” he says with a pout. “I belong here, and so do you! Billy, come with me, and you’ll float too!” He points to the sewer drain. “You’ll float too! You’ll float too! You’ll floa—“

The bugs from Georgie’s mouth crawl out of him, down his neck to his arm, and towards Bill, swarming together like they are one entity, big and black. Bill cringes away, trying to let go of Georgie’s arm, but he’s stuck. His skin is melded to the plastic of his coat. The bugs come closer, forming one larger one, with huge beady eyes and eight legs.

Bill pulls and pulls and pulls as Georgie’s voice cracks— _youllfloattooyoullfloattooyoullflOATTOOYOULLFLOATTOOYOULLFLOATTOO—_ and turns into one that’s haunted Bill’s dreams for years, the source of all his nightmares. The reason he wakes in cold sweats, breathing heavy but with no recollection of what he’d just been through.

 _Bill,_ the Other says, _focus. Remember the day you were having. It is not raining._

Georgie yells, “ _YOU’LL FLOAT TOO!”_ He giggles, and giggles, and giggles.

Bill looks towards the sewer—why does he do that?—and his breath catches in his throat. A pair of orange-yellow eyes look back at him, big and predatory, glinting gleefully. The face moves close, a red nose emerging, then white face paint, and a drooling, bloody mouth. The teeth are already long and waiting, eager for him.

It’s odd how Bill can tell he’s about to be eaten, like suddenly the circle of life has shifted and he’s at the bottom. He’s skittish but frozen in place, watching with wide eyes as it creeps ever closer.

_Focus, Bill Denbrough._

And he does, but he focuses on that mouth, cracking, and that face, pleased, and the way he can _see_ how he’s going to die. It’s reflected in the eyes, playing out second by second, a camera with a slow shutter speed. The creation of a claymation short, stunted and showing each and every minute move.

Bill is sucked in like it’s a particularly good movie.

It goes something like this: A clown crawls from a sewer, a tiny boy holds him back, and teeth rip into the tender flesh of his neck. His collarbone cracks in two, bloody lips suck on the pieces like a lollipop, and Bill’s head is torn from his neck. He does not die right away, of course not, and while he is unaware of everything else, the seven seconds he has left is just his little brother feasting on the remains of his body, rabid like a raccoon.

He will use this imagery in the book that makes him famous. He just has to get out of it first.

Pennywise is halfway out of the sewer when the imposter in the raincoat pushes him roughly, sending him backwards into the middle of the street. The rain stops here, only pounding on one side of the pavement. The sun beats down on Bill while he falls on his ass, palms aching even more as he uses them to support the rest of his weight.

Georgie still has half a face, but his eye is the one Bill remembers, warm and loving. “ _Go,”_ he insists. “I don’t know how much longer I can—“

“— _YOU LIED AND I DIED—“_

“—hold him off,” Georgie says, wincing. His bad eye rotates wildly, like this rhyme is a calling card, a way to control him. “You’re not supposed to be here. You have to get to Eddie. Follow the—“

“— _YOU LIED AND I DIED—“_

The clown is on its knees, feet the only things dangling in the sewer.

“—turtle. Follow the turtle, Billy, he’ll take you to Eddie, he’ll help you,” Georgie instructs quickly. His hand clenches and his coat sleeve reddens, ripping at the shoulder. “Billy, remember it’s not your fault, he’ll use it against you, I never blamed you, I love y—you lied and I died! _You lied and I died!”_ The words escape Georgie mechanically, his face still lax and staring earnestly at Bill. He repeats himself, eyes wide, one part frightened and two parts eerie.

A nudge at Bill’s hip has him looking away, the sounds of Georgie and Pennywise rising to ear-shattering levels. There’s a turtle at his side, multi-colored and odd-looking, like it can listen, like it _knows._ It cranes its neck straight and to the left before walking off, slow and certain. It does not look back, but Bill knows he’s expected to follow.

He scrambles up, watching his brother and this clown, and doesn’t want to leave. Doesn’t want to lose him again, the same way he lost him the first time. The guilt and the sorrow and the horror mix in his gut.

The turtle keeps going.

Bill stays where he is.

Georgie flings a hand at him, exasperated, snaps at Pennywise, “For _fuck’s_ sake, you can have me,” and tackles the clown back into the sewer. Bill never hears them land, but he hears their laughter mingle as one. _YOU LIED AND I DIED._

He inches forward, curious, hoping to see Georgie emerge in one piece, merely covered in dirt and muck.

_If you go any closer, I cannot protect you._

Bill stops.

Georgie does not come out.

He knows how this story goes.

_Follow me. We will go to Eddie’s, and then we will go home._

“Home?” Bill asks out loud.

 _Neibolt,_ the turtle up the block says. _It raised you and it is time to go back._

Bill squints into the sewer but does not move. Something slinks in the darkness, but it is not his brother and it is not a clown. It is nothing of consequence, nothing that matters. Spiders of various sizes scuttle out of the opening and Bill sighs, stomping on them as they come close to his shoes, unaware of the angry, pained squeals below him.

“Home is where the huh-huh-heart is,” Bill murmurs, turning on his heel. His shoe spreads spider gunk along the street.

A _heart,_ the turtle agrees. _I will not wait up here forever, Bill._

“But—“

_That is where he is meant to be. He is doing all he can for you. I do not know all, but what I do know I can share. He saves you, Bill. Now you must save yourself. Let’s move._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi i think stan has a crush on mike? oops


	10. don't let him deceive you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I mean, logically speaking, my mother _was_ right,” Eddie says, voice clipped. Clinical. “How can he—any of you—feel _anything_ towards me after all this time?”
> 
> Bill smacks his lips, pressing his stinging fingers together, and squats low to match Eddie’s height. “The same way you know,” he says quietly, deliberately. He’s determined to get this right, to get the words out without fuss or stutter. “We _know_ you. You know us. Years can pass without a single word, without anyone reaching out, but we’re Losers, Eddie. We’re a _family.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> things to look out for: homophobic language and behaviors; mentions of blood; death of a character but we didn't really like them anyway
> 
> this is... so very long, and guess what? i STILL have to up the chapter count! aiming for everything to fit in the next chapter, even though the number 11 is gross to me. i really tried to fit it all into one chapter, but the second i hit the 26,000 word mark i had to just give up. 
> 
> on the bright side, this chapter features literally EVERYONE, including multiple eddie POVs, a bill, a richie, AND a stan. incredible. so many differing opinions and personalities, though i admit stan and eddie at this point have similar thought processes.

1

_I used to be stronger than this._

It’s a thought.

The only thought.

It ricochets through his mind, bouncing off walls—some of his own creation; some not—and cracking at their foundations. _I used to be stronger than this._ It fights the fog settling over him, a swirling haze that keeps everything at bay, standing far off, not willing to mix. There is awareness, but only slight, and this fog, and _I used to be stronger than this._

Something clings to him—to the fleshy bits of his brain. Holds tight. Holds steady. It has its own pulsing power, different from the Thought, and tries to control him, like he’s some sort of wind-up doll. A marionette. It wants to put him back under.

_Under what?_

It wants to make him compliant.

_I used to be stronger than this._

He is in his head, but he is not alone. Something creeps in the peripherals, in the corners, slinking away before he can get a better look. It has its claws in him, but so does something else, something different. He is present in here, a blob of a body, but he doesn’t possess the capability to do much more than watch. Exist. It is his mind, but it is not _his,_ if that makes sense, and right now nothing makes sense. He watches a dark thing scuttle away, face masked in black corners, teeth flashing sharp and eager.

 _I used to be stronger than this._

It feels like a dream.

This is a dream he’s once had, but everything is… sluggish, slow. He urges himself to lift an arm, but the one he chooses hurts at the inner elbow; even as he gets past that, it’s like moving through jello or molasses. It takes too long to get from point A to point B.

There is something else in his mind besides himself and this darkness. There is something keeping him from working at full capacity.

He thinks he blinks. The motion makes him whoozy. He tries to throw a hand out to steady himself, but moves too slow—he’s forgotten that bit already—and finds himself falling to the ground. It’s hard, rocky, and it digs into his knees.

Blood rushes to where it belongs, his head hurting—but he’s in his head, so how can it hurt again? It’s been hurting this whole time. Now it’s just… it’s magnified… exemplified… it’s _Everything. Everywhere._

The ache from his knees trembles up his legs, fills his body. The haze is attracted to the pain. It rushes at him, consumes him, and he gasps sharply, heart constricting, throat closing up. This is not right. This is not—

**_Real?_**

**_Do you think this is not real?_**

_No,_ he thinks. _It is not real. I am stronger than this._

**_Are you?_**

**_Do you have proof?_**

**_How can you be so sure?_**

He does not know the answers to these questions. He does not know who he is, not his name nor his address, but he does know this. _I am stronger,_ he thinks. _I do not need to prove it to you._

**_Unfortunately, my dear, you do._**

He is forced to open his eyes. A balloon awaits him, vibrant red and bobbing a few feet in front of him. He looks at it, a phantom energy surging through him, a reminder of a feeling he should have but no longer does. It is just a balloon.

That is not the right thought to have. The balloon jerks closer, pulses as it expands and shrinks, trying to fill a space, trying to make itself into something it’s not.

He gazes at it curiously, trying to determine what part of this is supposed to—he doesn’t even know the word for what he’s supposed to feel! It’s like he’s never learned it—and feels a shudder around him. The bricks in the walls are loosening. The dam is threatening to burst. He wonders if he’ll drown in here, staring at a balloon meant for children.

It bumps against his nose, forced forward by the jarring movements. It smells of plastic. He can see his hair pressing to it, attracted to the static. Can see an eye as it blinks, just barely. The string wraps around his wrist, tight like a handcuff; the cut edge of the ribbon presses incessantly to his skin, slicing back and forth as if to make an incision. As if to hurt him.

He watches it, foggy and confused, and presses a finger to it to get it to stop. It struggles beneath his touch, bucking up with a supernatural strength.

This _is_ a dream he’s had before.

He will not have it again.

Letting go of the string, he takes both hands, wading slow through the air in front of him, and squeezes the balloon between his palms as hard as he can. As tight as he can. He digs all ten nails into the covering, gritting teeth he is now aware of, using arm muscles he’s remembered he has.

“No,” he says out loud, the stitches keeping his mouth shut snapping.

The balloon pops in his hands. The sound is loud, excruciating, a painful irritation to his ear drums. The red color of it splatters all across him like blood. Smells of it, too—metallic and bitter.

A shriek echoes in the deep recesses of his mind— _his_ now, taken back from whoever tried to steal it—and he turns his head to see the dark thing, the scuttling thing, throwing itself at him from the side.

“Don’t you _fucking_ touch me,” Eddie Kaspbrak snaps, coming back into his body. His words are slurred, slow, and full of drugged deliberation. His movements match them in synchronization, but he still tugs himself away from Henry Bowers as he tries to grab at Eddie’s aching arm.

Sharp pain shoots through it like it’s been broken. He remembers this one has, multiple times. He fell on it once, several years ago, and Richie broke it trying to set it, and it never healed correctly. He’d spent a whole summer in a cast, and then an autumn in a soft brace, and then—

_Wait, Richie._

Eddie’s hand swipes at Henry’s face and he shifts as far from him as the backseat of his mother’s car will allow, huddling against the door.

From ahead, Sonia calls, “ _Language,_ Eddie-bear, haven’t I taught you better than that?”

She hasn’t taught him shit, but he knows not to fight this one, even as confusion covers the reason. “Then get him away from me with that,” Eddie says, kicking a foot out. “What the fuck is that? What are you _doing?”_

Henry’s pout is sinister. _Why is he in my fucking car?_ “You looked like you were in pain, _Eddie-bear,”_ he says. “I only wanted to help.”

Eddie frowns at the syringe, bringing his hand to cover his veins, perfectly blue and completely exposed. He’s bruised where he’d been injected earlier on the cliff of the Barrens. Richie was telling him that was his favorite spot when he was younger, that he loved to see the view of their town, as shitty as it is, and the glistening water below. Sometimes ugly things are pretty.

“I’m fine,” he says curtly, and only because his mother is here, he adds, “Thank you for your concern, Henry.”

Bowers grins; the smile is familiar, but it is not his own. Henry’s never looked _that_ unhinged. “Anytime, babycakes,” he says. Eddie looks to the front to see if his mother noticed the nickname. She hasn’t, too focused on the road. “You just let me know if you need an extra pick-me-up, ‘kay? I’m on your side here.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says dryly. “You’ll be the first to know.” Henry shifts and Eddie kicks his foot out, hoping the distance and the angle is correct; if Henry’s hiss of pain is any indication, it is, and he’s gotten him right in the balls. “Stay over there.”

Henry grumbles something under his breath. Eddie’s ears pick it up, despite it being so low it goes almost unheard over the sound of the tires driving over asphalt: _kill them all. Kill them all. He’ll love me when I kill them all._

Fucking psychopath.

The position Eddie puts himself in is nothing to be desired—leg out, toe of his sneaker digging into Bowers’ pelvic area, spine ramrod straight against the seat and the door, his head turned towards the window. He watches landmarks of Derry go by, parks and schools, churches and the library, and trees, trees, trees.

“Where are you taking me?” he asks, though the sinking suspicion in his stomach answers that for him. They are so far away from the Barrens, from the Losers, from the last semi-safe space Eddie had.

“Home,” Sonia answers. “You’ve been an incredibly bad boy, Eddie, tricking me like that. Hopefully I can knock some sense in you like I used to when you’re surrounded by familiarity. Those kids you tried to tag around with today… they’re not good for you, baby. Don’t you remember what they used to _do_ to you?”

Eddie feels the disbelief constrict across his face, a quick lift of his brows, and glances over at Bowers again. The things the _Losers_ tried to do to him? Sure. Okay. He’s sitting in the same car as a kid who pinned him down and tried to pull his pants down to see if he really _was_ a boy, like he claimed, but the Losers are the dangerous ones here, right, sure, absolu—

“ _Like you used to?”_

“Oh, honey, let’s not get into that until we’re home,” Sonia says. “I hate conversations in the car, you know that, and you always get so motion sick, and that terrible, terrible boy, who knows what he did to you? You were babbling so much nonsense when we got you.”

“Because fu—because _Bowers_ injected me with some kind of sedative,” Eddie retorts, ignoring her earlier statement. She’s spent plenty of time yelling at him in the driver’s seat. “I was fine until you got there… and how did…?” He frowns, unable to put the pieces together. He can’t recall much of the past day, actually, sitting here. “How’d you find me?”

He’d left no trail.

Left no _house._

There’s no way she could’ve… not unless she put trackers in his clothes…

Sonia dares a glance at the rear view mirror, catching Eddie’s eyes with her own, true anger mixed with her special brand of artificial concern and sadness. “It was easy, Eddie-bear”— _Jesus Christ with the Eddie-bear! What is he, five?—_ “I just listened to the sound of complete and utter betrayal and followed that.”

“ _You_ followed the— _I’m_ the one who should feel betrayed!” Eddie bursts. He grips his seatbelt with a fist, holding tight. It feels constricting, digging into his chest. “You kept me locked up for years, Ma! You made me think I was crazy, that there was something _wrong with—”_

“—it was for your own good,” Sonia says pleasantly. “Now please be quiet, dear. I’d like to make it home in one piece. We can talk about this later.”

“I want to talk about it now,” he shouts, but Sonia ignores him, like she ignores everything she dislikes about him.

Bowers leans over, breath hot over Eddie’s cheek. “There _is_ something wrong with you,” he whispers, nosing Eddie’s ear. “We saw you. Kissing that little faggot boy. She was trying to protect you from that. You’ve always been crazy, Eddie Kaspbrak. Crazy and sick. She was doing you a _favor.”_

“So have you.” Eddie shoves him away. “Come near me again and I’ll slit your throat.”

“With what?” Bowers laughs. “You’re balled up in a corner. You can’t do _shit.”_

“Yes, I can,” Eddie hisses, and even though his arm hurts, and his head pounds, and there’s not a lot making sense to him the closer he gets to his street, he unclicks his seatbelt and tugs frantically at the car door.

He can’t be here. He can’t be that much farther from his friends. They need to be together. Lucky seven. Strength in numbers. Without all of them, they’ll…

 _Die,_ his mind supplies, sending him on a dizzying journey to a future he wants no part of.

They need him, and his mother and Bowers are taking him away from them, probably knowing what damage they’ll cause. _You were made for destruction. You’re stronger than this._

He pulls at the door again, only for his mother to lock them from the front—child locks, since he can’t tug at the piece until it unlocks for him manually. “ _Mom,”_ he says sharply. “I need to get out of this car.”

“Henry, be a dear and calm him down, will you?” Sonia asks. They’re closing in on the street now. A few more turns and one busy intersection and they’ll be home. Eddie never realized how far the Barrens are from his house before. Never had reason to. 

Eddie kicks out again. “Touch me and you die, Bowers.”

“Just doin’ what the good lady wants,” Henry says, savage grin lighting up his face. “Wouldn’t want to upset her. You understand.”

“I don’t—this isn’t—get that fucking needle away from me!”

Henry’s hovering over him, thick, heavy weight making Eddie immediately begin to sweat. He can feel the prick as the thing breaks skin, can see how Bowers’ face transforms into the clown’s, his control on him so strong, and thrashes about, trying to dislodge him. “Mom, _please,”_ he begs, elbowing Henry in his red clown nose. “ _Mom, don’t you—”_

But she merely raises the volume on the radio, that mixtape of songs Eddie always listens to playing at an accelerated speed, too fast to be coherent. Spliced between each song is the sound of one of his friend’s dying, their screams of pain and shrieks of agony echoing through the car. It’s like his mom installed surround sound in this stupid thing.

He tries again, calling her name, calling for her like he’s little and he needs help, or a hug, or a kiss to a skinned knee, and she merely hums along. She taps her fingers on the steering wheel to the beat of Richie’s sobs, his begs to _stop, please, I’ll do anything._

Henry smells rancid, like really bad, really evil, really ancient, curdling magic. Eddie skirts back, whatever the Bridge and Richie gave him opposing it so forcefully he feels his soul try to leave his body. Henry laughs, and it’s Pennywise’s laugh, childlike and creepy.

“You afraid of a little needle, Eds?” It asks, grinning gleefully. Maniacally. “Afraid this one’s contaminated? Afraid you’ll get _HIV?”_

“Is that clean?” Eddie asks, contorting his body to shove his arms behind his back.

“Oh, I don’t know,” It replies. “We just found it at the hospital. Isn’t that right, Henry, my pet?”

Henry’s consciousness comes through in his eyes. He nods. “Could’ve been used,” he says. “Could’ve been new. I didn’t bother to check.” He leans forward, nose to nose with Eddie. “But it’s already been in you once. I wonder what disease you’ll have for real this time.”

“ _MOM!”_

“Eddie, I’m _driving,”_ Sonia scolds.

“Mom, please,” Eddie says, voice cracking, tears spilling over his cheeks. Henry’s face is half his, half Pennywise’s, and the look of it is so jarring, so _terrible_ he wants to vomit. Wants to throw himself out of this moving car and _run._

But, he reasons slowly, his panic ebbing some, that could be because of whatever they’re injecting him with.

He watches the syringe empty into his vein—how did they get his arm? Wasn’t he meant to be stronger?—and pull out, his skin dotting with the tiniest drop of blood. Bowers smears it against his finger, tip stained ruby red, and brings it to his mouth, lapping it up.

“The fear is not strong enough,” he says, “but the blood will do for now.”

Eddie’s mouth goes dry, stuffed with cotton. He can’t swallow correctly, his neck itchy. His ears and cheeks burn. He blinks over and over, trying to find where Bowers begins and Pennywise ends, but there is just half a clown in front of him. His tongue darts out to lick his lips. Everything feels like sandpaper.

Grappling on to life, trying to fight the pull to sleep, _oh he’s so tired,_ he tries to remember Stan’s rationalization of It. Of the magic. Pull at the layers until you figure out what it really is. Rip off the band aid and find the cut.

There is nothing to be afraid of here that he wasn’t already afraid of. Henry is a bully. His mother is a bully. These are people who have always hurt him, even if he tried to find reasons to accept the hurt they gave—he was weak, he wasn’t good enough, he acted a certain way. But that’s not right. Not anymore. He’s never been any of those things.

There is no clown.

And if there is, he’s imagining it.

And if there is, he’s not afraid of a _stupid fucking clown._

“You’ll have to try harder than that, Eddie-bear,” Pennywise coos, as if he can read his mind. “You can’t get away from me this time.”

“Yes, I can,” Eddie mumbles, neck drooping forward. His chin hits his chest. He looks like he has maybe four knees. Everything is spinning. “I can get away from you for good. Get rid of you, too. Just need to get back to my friends…”

A gloved finger lifts his head up. He makes eye contact with yellow, decaying eyes swirling excitedly, madly in their sockets. Henry is a clown now. Henry has always been a clown. Laughter spills from Pennywise’s mouth, red lips parting to reveal two sharp incisors, like he’s some kind of beaver. A hamster. “ _What_ friends, Eddie?” he asks, genuinely curious. “You never had any friends.”

“N-no,” Eddie replies, stammering around the word, around the implications. The eyes he’s looking at suck him in, turn bright and harmful, two pockets of searing light, and Eddie gets caught in them. He watches himself at five, six, seven, eight playing by himself at school, at home. He’s nine, ten, eleven, twelve, and he is the dutiful son, doing his homework, watching television with his mother, having no contact with the outside world. There is no one but him. There has never been anyone but—

“No,” he says fiercely. _You’re stronger than this._ “That’s not right. Where is Bill? Stan? _Richie?”_

“Those people don’t exist, Eddie-bear,” Pennywise replies sadly. “You made them up. They aren’t real.” He frowns, eyebrows turning down, mouth a red, wet pout. “But you want to who is? _Me,_ and I care about you so much. I’ve been waiting _years_ for this—”

And he leans forward with those ugly teeth of his and takes a huge bite out of Eddie’s left cheek. He comes back bloody, dripping down his neck to his dirty, white collar. There is skin— _Eddie’s_ skin—between his teeth. He chews, looking delighted. Stronger. 

There is a gaping hole in Eddie’s face. He can hear his breath whistle out of it, but cannot feel the wound. With dirty, shaking fingers he shouldn’t be using, Eddie touches at his cheek.

His hand goes all the way through.

He is able to touch his tongue. His teeth.

When he screams, the bite stretches, worsens, and sends trickles of blood down Eddie’s own neck, matching Pennywise. The cry seems to echo through the car, much like the sounds of the other Losers dying on the radio, but his mother doesn’t hear. Doesn’t even bother to turn around. 

She eases the car down Main Street. 

2

Eddie doesn’t remember falling asleep, but when he comes to, it seems to be only his mother and him, and she is too close for comfort.

“Wha’ are you doin’?” he asks. His face is tight on one side. Sticky. If he tries to open his mouth, a sharp pain shrieks within him and heavy liquid fills the pocket of his cheek.

His mother’s hands fluttering around his face reek of creams and lotions, of antiseptics and the ugly tang of medication. “Fixing this wound that awful, awful boy gave you,” Sonia says, pressing a bandage beside his nose. “I told you to stay away from him, that he was going to hurt you.”

Eddie blinks. “Bowers?”

“No,” she says, fierce and disgusted. “ _Richie.”_

Eddie’s mind is a little hazy and everything is a _lot_ foggy, and for some reason he’s in his bed when he knows he shouldn’t be, when he thinks this doesn’t _exist,_ but that… that doesn’t make a _lick_ of sense. Richie did… to his… to his _face?_ Whatever this is?

“No,” says Eddie. “Richie wouldn’t…” He remembers a tumble through the window, not all of his memories intact, not yet, and a swing of a baseball bat—but a bat doesn’t create a hole in the face, and that’s what this feels like, and _Eddie’d_ been the one doing the swinging.

_Where the hell is that baseball bat?_

“Richie wouldn’t do that,” he says as coherently as possible though he does not have control of much of his mouth. It hurts to open his jaw, and his tongue feels heavier and larger than usual. “He… he wouldn’t. Ma, he _likes_ me, and I like—”

“Shh,” Sonia murmurs, pressing a warm cloth to his face, wiping at his forehead, the corners of his eyes, his nostrils. She drags it down the length of his neck, tutting. Something seems to unstick there. “Don’t finish that sentence. You’ve always been so confused, my love.”

“Confused?” Eddie bleats back. “I’m not… Richie didn’t do this to me. Richie just—”

“—put his dirty, dirty hands all over your perfect body, like he always did,” Sonia interrupts. Eddie is taken aback by her mean tone of voice, but it’s not anything he hasn’t heard her say… just not to his face. Not about him. “He was always touching what wasn’t his, always making a mess, trying to take you away from me. Of course he would hurt you like this. Of course he would make you think—”

“—I don’t _think,”_ Eddie says, scooting away from her. He hits the back of his head against his headboard, the bars at his back feeling like he’s locked in a prison cell. “I…” His head swirls, memories colliding together—years past, hours ago—and though it flits together like Richie was thirteen ten minutes ago and seventeen four years ago, he knows what she says is wrong. It has to be. It can’t be.

He’s experienced a touch that was harmful, unwanted. A touch he shied away from and avoided unless absolutely necessary. That was never Richie’s.

“I know,” Eddie finishes fiercely. The throb behind his eye intensifies. It feels like it’s about to burst, like knowing as fiercely as he does is fighting a battle within him. _Against_ him. “I _know_ he likes me, and I _know_ I like him. I’ve always known. Sometimes it feels like there are only three things that I’ve ever known: how much I love Richie, how much my friends need me and I need them, and how much you hate me for not being what you want me to be.”

Sonia’s face grows bright red from the neck up until she looks like a tomato. “You love him,” she repeats. “Oh, honey, what has he _done_ to you?”

“He hasn’t done anything,” Eddie replies. “Just loved me the way you never did.”

“Loved you?” She laughs. “Eddie-bear, that’s _demented._ He doesn’t love you! Why would _he_ love a boy like _you?”_ She smooths his hair down, cups his injured cheek. It hurts but he won’t give her that satisfaction; she does it on purpose, anyway, touching his hurts and making them ache more, just to prove she’s got the upper hand. The power.

_I used to be stronger than this._

Another voice, tinier, hidden far, far away: _You still are._

Eddie lets his lower lip tremble. By the glint in her eye, this is the reaction she wants—but let’s be clear here: it’s not the real reaction she’s getting. A putrid, violent, red rage courses through him. _A boy like him?_ What is _wrong_ with a boy like _him?_ She made him this way, after all. “What do you mean, Mommy?” he asks.

“It’s just…” Sonia sighs, reaching forward to clutch him close, pressing his head to her chest. He wiggles his face away from her, turning his head to smell something other than the cold cream she uses. “You’re so—oh, don’t take this the wrong way, baby, but you’re so _scared,_ so _helpless._ Pathetic, in a way. Without me, who knows what you would’ve gotten into? What would’ve gotten _into_ you? That boy… he doesn’t love you, not the _you_ I know, but the you he wants you to be.”

 _The me I am,_ Eddie thinks. _The Eddie that’s been hidden beneath these layers you make me wear._

“When I saw him touch you today…” she continues. “When I saw the way you reacted… I couldn’t believe I had led you so astray. He doesn’t want you like this, Eddie, sickly and weak, broken like this… or maybe he does.” She hugs him tighter. “Maybe he wants you feeble and unable to make your own choices so he can take whatever he wants from you.”

“I am not feeble, Ma,” Eddie murmurs. “I am not sick. I am just… I’m me.” He sniffs, pulling back so he can look at her. He hurts all over, not just his cheek, but his arm and his lower back. He will not let her see this, the way he aches. He will not prove her point. “And I’ve never been good enough for you, but I’ve been good enough for my friends. For Richie. He _Wished_ for me, Ma. You don’t _Wish_ for someone you don’t want.”

Her long fingernails dig into his scalp as she runs them through his hair, gritty and tangled from salt and sulfur and water. “And what did he wish for, Eddie-bear? Did he tell you word for word what he begged that bridge for? Richard Tozier bends the truth, like that entire family does.”

“He Wished to see me again,” Eddie says, ignoring the truth she hits at him like a jab to the heart. Richie always was bending the truth, creating different realities… but he’d never do that to Eddie, at least not to hurt him. “Because you hid me from everyone else. You took me away and kept me from them all.”

“To protect you!” Sonia exclaims. “And his wish brought you nothing but pain, Eddie-bear. You’re confused, and you’re hurt, and you could’ve _died_ out there! What have I been telling you? You’d lie to your mother for this? For Richie Tozier?”

“It’s more than just him, Ma,” Eddie insists. “It’s the others too: Bill, Ben, Bev, Mike, Stan. My _friends._ You let me believe I didn’t have any. You let me sit in my misery to control me—”

“—and they fill your head with lies to do the same,” Sonia cuts in. The words feel like the sharp edge of a blade, splitting his heart in two. “They don’t need you. They don’t love you. Not like I do.”

“And it’s a good thing they don’t,” Eddie snaps. “They love me for me. They’ve never asked me to be anything other than what I am, and that’s what Richie Wished for.”

Sonia’s eyes glint. She grimaces, mouth twisting like she’s fighting back a snarl. “You don’t find it strange he wished for you and the last time he saw you you were twelve? You don’t find it _odd_ he, a grown teenager, wanted the preteen version of you to reappear right before his eyes? He’s dirty, Eddie-bear. Always has been. Always will be. You’d do well to stay away from him. He’s only ever been using you. You’ve always been so easy to capture under a spell and Richie Tozier is very charming, I’ll give him that…”

“He’s not using me.” Eddie struggles in her hold, trying to get away from her without hurting her, physically or emotionally. He doesn’t know what’s gotten into her, or where her new friend, Henry, is, or if there is something more malevolent at play than her usual smothering tendencies.

He’d forgotten how good she could be at this, at taking everything he knew to be fact and twisting it on its head. Bill is his friend? Only because he pities him. Richie wants to play? Only to make fun of how he can’t keep up. Stan asked to study for science? Because he knows you’re so bad at school, Eddie, and he feels bad…

Eddie swallows and tries to get her voice out of his head, whispering those awful words to him, sweet nothings wrapped in barbed wire. In poison. “He wouldn’t. He’s in love with me and I’m in love with him. I’ve known that since I was twelve. I’ve always known, even when you tried to take it away from me.”

“Is that so?” she asks, voice pitching low. “Then what is this letter about, hm?”

In her effort to grab an envelope from the desk, she lets go of him, and Eddie pulls away, knees to his chest, putting as much distance between them as he possibly can. The envelope she holds is bright red, the kind you’d find in the greeting card section of the drugstore, and it’s been split open at the top. He can see Richie’s scrawl on one side, messy and lopsided: _Eddie Kaspbrak._

A greeting card emerges from within, a picture of a kitten on the front, like he’d plucked it from the store, or his mother’s box for holidays. Sonia opens it, flips it over to show him the writing inside, and clears her throat as she begins to read:

“ _Dear Eddie,_

 _I know I am rarely honest, but I have to be honest with you. I bet Stan and Bev twenty bucks I could get you to fall in love with me, and it was so easy. So, so easy. You’re so malleable, like clay, easily formed after just one compliment. You’re like putty in my hands, falling apart at every touch, every glance, and that money’s in the bag. It’s only been a week but I can already tell you like me. You follow me everywhere. You want to spend lunch alone. You call your mom to tell her you’re at Stan’s when you’re really with me, shoulder to shoulder on my bed as we watch TV or read comics. I wonder what it’d be like if I told you I was falling for you. If you’d blush and tell me it back. I wonder if they’d give me more money if we kissed. If we touched. If I got your hands or your mouth on my—_ oh, it’s just too dreadful to continue!” Sonia wails, a cry building up in her throat. “The things he goes on to say. The things he wants. It’s all a game to him and you’ve been nothing but a pawn, and that is not your fault. Richie Tozier is good with words and good at playing with your heart, he always has been… We can fix this, Eddie-bear. We can forget everything he’s ever said and done, all the things you’ve experienced today. You just give me the word and I’ll do what I always do. I’ll fix you.”

 _Do what I always do,_ Eddie thinks, wondering what that means. _Fix you._

 _She has always been your biggest enemy **,**_ that voice says to him. _She has always tried to keep you from reaching your full potential._

“I don’t need fixing,” Eddie says sharply, surging forward and grabbing the card. He looks down at it with shaky vision, the words going in and out, and does not bother reading it for himself to see if what she’s said is true. He grits his teeth, ignores the pain in his face and his arm, and rips it to long shreds, then smaller, and smaller, until it’s a flurry of tiny pieces on his bedspread. “This is a _lie,_ Ma. You are a _liar._ I have always known that, but I never thought you’d stoop to this level.”

“The words on that page—they’re real,” she insists. “He wrote them. I know it’s a lot to handle, especially since you’re”—her voice pinches here, full of distaste—“ _in love with him,_ but—”

“—you’re wrong,” Eddie snaps. “You’re wrong, and you’re a liar, and you can’t keep me here forever! Not anymore. He didn’t start writing me these letters until I was already gone. He wouldn’t have said any of that shit. I _know_ Richie, and I know Stan and Bev, and they would _never—”_

“—you are _delusional,_ Edward!” Sonia shouts. “You want so much more than you’re allowed to have and it’s getting to you! I told you. I _warned_ you. It’s dangerous out there.”

“No, Ma, it’s dangerous in _here,”_ Eddie retorts. “Someone should have warned me about _you.”_

“I am only doing what’s best for you, dear,” Sonia says softly, carefully. She reaches a hand out to him like he’s a startled, scared cat, and Eddie slaps it away, not caring for the loud sound it makes or the fact that he’s basically hit his own mother.

“Don’t touch me,” he says, “and get out of my room.”

“Eddie-bear, please…”

“I _said_ get out of my room!”

She gives him one withering look, not the type a son should get from their mother, and stands up, clutching her hand close to her heart like he’s fucking stabbed her or something. She’s so good at playing the victim. At being wounded. “Fine,” she says, forcing a tone that is light and airy. It physically clashes with the atmosphere of the room, dark with anger and sadness. “I will give you your space. You could’ve just asked nicely.”

“And you could’ve let me be a normal boy,” Eddie retorts, “but we don’t always get what we want, do we, Mother?”

“You have _never_ been a _normal boy.”_ She scoffs, and then with a sniff, adds, “I’ll let you think about what you’ve done and said to me, but you just remember who has always been here for you when your beloved _Richie_ doesn’t come to save you again.”

She crosses the room in hurried steps, the fastest he’s ever seen her move, and throws over her shoulder, like she’d almost forgotten: “I’ve left some of his other, more recent letters for you to look over. He’s not the Prince Charming you want him to be, Eddie-bear, and I feel sorry for you to have to find out this way.”

His door closes with a slam, the sound of several locks clicking loudly in the silence that ensues. Eddie counts them—one, two, three, all on the outside of his bedroom door—and remains in his bed, even as the pile of letters calls to him, begging for him to read. He shakes like a leaf instead, repeating the phrase he’s clung to so desperately this entire time.

_I used to be stronger than this._

_I used to be stronger than this._

And then, something he just remembers from the cliffside of the Barrens, Richie’s voice, panicked yet determined: _I won’t leave you in that house! Your mother is not right, okay?_

_I used to be stronger than this._

_I used to—_

_I am stronger than this._

_My mother is not right._

Eddie gets up and faces his reflection in the mirror, peeling back the square bandage taped to his cheek.

3

“I am following a _turtle,”_ Bill says, voice twinged with disbelief, as he—follows a turtle. “A puh-puppet of my brother tackled a kuh-kuh-killer clown into a storm drain and I am following a _tttttt-turtle.”_

“Yes,” the turtle says. Bill’s following a _talking turtle._ “You may call me Maturin, if you wish.”

“A turtle named Maturin,” Bill muses, the two of them turning away from the town proper. “What is your role in all of this, Maturin? How did you find yourself in D-Derry?”

“A guide,” Maturin says. “A protector, perhaps, though I am not well-versed in it. I aspire for Goodness, such as yourself.”

Bill watches the easy toddle of the animal, shell changing colors as the light hits it, rotating between yellows and pinks, reds and purples. He wonders if he hit his head at any point today. “I don’t think I’m guh-good at all,” he admits. “B-b-b-b-buh-bad things always happen to me and the people I love. I can’t be good if I’m always causing puh-pain, right?” He winces at the stutter; he no longer knows how to control it. It’s been so long since he’s had to worry about managing it.

The turtle spins around, stubby legs making him go slow, and he lifts his neck as if to get a good look at him. “You _are_ Good, William Denbrough. Unfairly tried, but Good nonetheless. I wish I could have given you all that you Yearned for, but that’s not how a Wish works.”

The streets around them grow quieter, if that’s possible. It feels as if the town has paused, like a freeze-frame in a movie. If they were in town, would Bill see his fellow townsfolk stuck in time? Around him, the wind warms, the temperature rising despite the cold front Stan had warned them all about. Bill feels too hot, reaching up to unwrap his scarf from his neck. He unzips his coat and lets it hang, confused by the drastic change from start of winter to… to summer, but it feels almost right, like it was meant to be this way. Like his life has always been an endless summer, disguising itself in the passage of time. Maybe he has always been thirteen and the rest of it has been a big joke.

He follows Maturin down a street that seems quieter, deader, than the rest, and Bill breaks free of his wandering thoughts to say, “You are the other voice we hear.”

“I am a guider,” Maturin repeats. “I speak when I am needed. I guide when it is necessary, and I have guided us to where we have to be.”

“Guided us to where we have to…” The words die on Bill’s tongue, his gaze settling on the lawn, the porch, the house looming over him. He is transported back in time, looking at it, where Eddie stars in all his memories.

Eddie, at four, in pre-school, hiding behind his father’s legs.

Eddie, at five, and a birthday party in his backyard, the two of the covered in mud.

Eddie, at six, their classrooms different for the first time.

Eddie, at seven, at his father’s funeral, suit jacket too big, sleeve so long it covers their joined hands.

Eddie, at eight, warily befriending both Richie, who is too loud and has already gotten in trouble on the first day of school, and Stan, who always looks like he’s judging everyone _but_ Richie.

Eddie, at nine, and at ten. Eleven. Twelve. Years of him, his best friend, his confidant, the one who looked up to him because Bill pretended to have all the answers. The one Bill wanted to protect. The one Bill failed, as he failed his brother. His last memory of him has haunted him for years, a faceless boy in a dusty kitchen, screaming for help, screaming as his face is sucked from the bone.

“Negative thoughts are all-consuming, Bill Denbrough,” the turtle says. “Rid yourself of them or the task will become immensely harder. Your friends have the right of it, if you need some reassurance.”

A breath in and a breath out. Bill’s hands shake, then still, worry and fear as steady and real as the air around him.

“This is the second chance you have always Yearned for,” Maturin tells him. “The one you should have Wished for.”

“I didn’t—”

“—Wishing is a convoluted thing,” Maturin continues on. “There is no rhyme or reason to it. Some Wishes come to pass because they are necessary. Some disappear altogether to make room for those.”

Bill wets his lips. “And mine has been…”

“Yes,” the turtle answers. “To make Richie’s a reality, but not only because he Wished for it. His was always meant to be, written in the stars. His Wish is more than what it is.”

“I feel it, the immensity,” Bill agrees. A tremor races down his spine to settle in a knot at his lower back. “But, Mah-Maturin, what does that mean for Eddie? Does he… Georgie had to… does Eh-Eh-Eh-Eddie—?”

If a turtle could make a face, this one would. His eyes grow big, glassy, and Bill imagines the tears welling up in them. “That I do not know,” Maturin replies. “I normally can see what comes next, but when faced with It, the future is fuzzy. It always has been. All I can see is you, my Winners.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Bill murmurs, gazing at the house again. It brightens in the sunlight, a white that scorches the eyes. “We’re Losers. Always have been.”

“Not to me,” the turtle says. He grows in size as he moves closer to Bill, the size of a large dog and nosing at him like one, too. “Manifest your own destiny. Make your own future. Everything is but an illusion, is it not?” His bright eyes blink at him warmly, like he and Bill are old friends. He thinks they are. He thinks he’s known him in all his lives. In all his forms, for surely he has not always been a human. “Now go. Be the friend you want to be. Be there for him. Create the world you deserve to live in, for I have taken too much already.” He pauses, looks at Bill like he will never see him again, similar to the way Georgie had looked at him back at the Barrens. “This is where we part.”

“Part?” Bill echoes, panic rising up his neck. He feels stiff with it, with the terror. “No. Maturin. How am I suh-suh-supposed to…”

But the turtle is fading like a mirage, like he was never there in the first place. Even as he goes, his voice rings true, carried by a gentle breeze. “You have always known, Bill. Seven. Seven. _Seven…”_

Bill stares at the place he had been for a long, long time, immensely sad. It is like he has said goodbye for the last time and knows it in some deep part of himself, and he wishes he could have said more. Could have asked for more. He wonders if he would’ve gotten it, if he could’ve found the words to ask _why me? Why him? Why us?_ Would Maturin have answered truthfully? _Is_ there an answer or does it merely come down to seven children being in the wrong place at the wrong time with too much spunk and a lot of fear?

Bill will never find out.

He turns to face the house again and finds that in his disappearance, a veil has been lifted. Sound has returned to the world again—a car revs in the far distance; a door slams shut as a child returns home; a telephone rings somewhere nearby—and with it Bill’s vision changes too.

There is what can only be described as a security detail around Eddie’s house, a macabre one at best. He crouches behind a neighbor’s bushes to look, squinting, at the—

“Are those _dead kids?”_ he asks aloud. “Is that _Betty Ripsom’s bottom half?”_

How the _fuck_ is he supposed to get past these things, supernatural and strong, able to render he and his friends motionless? They look like nothing but he knows better; their strength and speed are unmatched. They can end Bill’s life in less than a heartbeat.

A butterfly brushes past his cheek. Bill reaches up to swipe at it, only to find it flying towards Eddie’s house, using a path the undead army cannot see. It flutters through the air, drawing an imaginary map for Bill, staying close to the crooked fence separating the Kaspbrak house from the one behind it, and darts across the lawn to a large tree with branches that reach long, far enough to scratch at a window on the second floor. This butterfly sits on a windowsill garden as if to make its point and then flies off again, up higher and higher still until Bill has lost sight of it.

It’s _the_ tree. The one that housed the treehouse Sonia Kaspbrak dismantled when Eddie got one splinter in his thumb. The one Richie climbed time and time again after getting kicked out of the house for playing too rough with Eddie.

Bill has never had to go this way before, has never not been allowed entrance.

But he has to save Eddie, and if Richie can do it, gangly and uncoordinated as he is…

He takes a deep, searching breath, digging for the parts of him that match Richie—loyalty, bravery, _heart—_ and makes a run for it.

Bill bursts from the bushes, fingers trailing along the fence, and dares a look behind him to make sure these kids, arms and legs and faces missing, aren’t following. They aren’t, more focused on the front door than they are anything else, stupid in their surveillance, and Bill is able to close the open distance between the fence and the tree with no issue. Recent usage of the tree leaves Bill with foot and handholds, his nails digging into bark and breaking against the rough wood. He scrambles up, his core aching, biceps straining; he takes a moment or two (four) to catch his breath once he’s thrown his leg over the side of the branch, thick and reliable—or so he hopes.

His finger runs red, nail stinging and blood welling where he scraped it. He sucks it into his mouth, looking through the window into Eddie’s room—it has to be, Richie never mentioned the tree climbing leading elsewhere—and tries to see what kind of situation he’s about to get himself into. His mind wanders with possibilities, knowing what he knows from Stan and Mike, what they were able to pull from Richie on the way back from the Barrens.

Is Bowers in there, carving his name into Eddie’s stomach?

Is Criss leering at him from the doorway, eager to break all his bones?

Has his mother tied him to his bed, determined to keep him in place for the rest of his life, uncaring of the emotional and mental toll she’s taken on him?

 _Worse:_ Is Pennywise there already, Eddie’s defenses down, finally eating the face he’d tried for years ago, the fear enough to keep him alive for months to come?

But for all Bill cranes and squints and _searches,_ he sees nothing. No movement. No sign that Eddie is in there. That Eddie is alive.

It is quiet, easy to enter.

 _It is a trap,_ he thinks, but as quickly as that thought comes to mind, it is tossed to the side. It is not a trap. It is—just that easy. _For now._

Bill grips the branch in front of him, scooting forward, inch by slow inch, and hovers over a tiny garden, flowers interspersed with herbs. Tomatoes. It looks well cared for. He knocks on the window, a tentative announcement of his arrival, and pries it up, his broken fingernails screaming in protest. He stains the white of it red, smearing it along the edges.

The window opens easily, as Richie said it did, and Bill is extra careful of this garden, the one thing he knows is actually Eddie’s and Eddie’s alone, and hops into the room as gracefully as he can.

“At least _you_ didn’t break anything,” comes Eddie’s voice, soft and breathless, as quiet as he can be.

“Tried my hardest,” Bill replies, matching his tone. “Richie has never been one for subtlety… and he never guh-guh-grew into his legs.” He turns to close the window as silently as he can; he doesn’t know how noise travels, if It’s army outside can hear.

“I thought it’d be him who’d come,” Eddie admits.

“Stan knocked him out,” Bill explains. “He—there was—he needed sleep. I’m sure he’s p-pissed I’m the one here and not him, but…” He swallows, pulling his hat off and shoving it in his jacket pocket. “I couldn’t leave you behind. Not again.”

“It’s not safe for you here,” Eddie says. “It feels like there’s… I think It is here, or at least part of it. This house has always felt eerily like it never belonged to me, but to something worse.”

Bill inches closer. “Th-th-there’s a bunch of dead kids surrounding your porch, like they’re wuh-wuh-waiting for something or on the l-l-l-l-l-l-luh-lookout.”

Eddie turns his head towards him, lips downturned. “Your stutter is worse than ever, Bill.”

“I’m huh-handling it,” Bill replies, trying to fight the wave of frustration that crashes over him every time a word gets stuck. “Wh-what the _fuh-_ uck happened to your face?”

“Oh.” Eddie turns back to his mirror, scrutinizing the large bite in his cheek. Bill moves ever nearer, squinting at it, unsure of what to make of it. Tendons of muscle and skin have started to slowly grow back, attempting to close the hole, but he can still see right through the cheek to his teeth, and when he opens his mouth to speak, his tongue. Blood spreads along the edges of the wound, one side of Eddie’s face ruddy red and bruising. “Henry Bowers turned into Pennywise in the backseat of my car and bit me.”

Bill blinks, and blinks, and blinks. “I—huh?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense,” Eddie says, and he relays what he knows to Bill. His mother showing up at the cliffside, Criss, Bowers, and Patrick Hockstetter in tow; the injection of some kind of sedative; being separated from Richie; coming to in the car, only to find that Bowers and Pennywise were merging, half-man, half-clown. “I have no fear for him,” he adds, “but he said my blood would do… so he took what he wanted. He’s always wanted to eat my face.”

“It’s dis-disgusting, man,” Bill says. “He just—ate your face?”

“Yep,” Eddie says. “My mom didn’t even notice.”

Bill scoffs. “Typical.”

“Yeah, but I should be able to…” Eddie brings a hand to the wound, covering it as best he can, and hums that same tune they’d all used to staunch Ben’s bleeding earlier.

Bill feels the pull of the magic swirling around the room, visceral and tangible, golden strands plucked seemingly from thin air surging towards Eddie’s face. They slip between his fingers and beneath his palm, the song at its last legs, and when Eddie pulls away, there is nothing but the sliver of a scar there, the imprint of four sharp teeth.

He pumps a puddle of hand sanitizer in between his hands and scrubs—between fingers and knuckles, all the way up to his elbow.

“You k-k-kept it,” Bill notes. “We got r-rid of it all for Ben.”

“I know,” says Eddie, “and I could’ve done the same, but I wanted proof. I want the reminder that I’m stronger than It. That I won’t go down as easily as everyone thinks I will.”

“I nuh-never—”

“—you all did at one point and it’s fine,” Eddie interrupts. “I constantly need to be saved, so it makes sense that you—”

“—you don’t _need_ to be saved!” Bill interrupts, loud and insistent. Eddie shushes him, an eye on his door, and he lowers his voice, keeping the emotion in it. “We’ve never felt like we n-needed to save you or that you were w-w-wuh-weighing us down. You’ve shown up time and time again and I spent all this time wuh-worried about myself…”

“Your brother had just died,” Eddie says softly. He turns to face him head-on and once again Bill is struck by how much older this boy is, how he’s missed so much and yet so little. How he _forgot_ Eddie, soft-spoken yet opinionated, fierce and incredibly brave. Forgot them all, the Losers and what they stood for: a friendship, a bond, a _family_ carved so deep into his heart.

“He’s always been dead,” Bill replies, “and he’ll always be d-dead”—the word hurts, fresh like it’d just happened yesterday—“but you’re here, and if I can do one th-th-thing right, it’s you. I can get you out of here and we can… we can get rid of I-I-It once and for all.” He places a hand to Eddie’s shoulder, feels warmth and power and strength zap into his palm. “It’s not saving. It’s my— _our_ second ch-chance. I’m sorry for not being there for you. For not being the friend you deserved when you were always the fuh-fuh-friend _I_ needed.”

Eddie shrugs a shoulder, eyes flashing with a deep, dark understanding that does not match the pink flushing across his cheek, the nasty scar a vibrant red that pulls at the white of new flesh. “You didn’t know,” he says. “You’d forgotten just like me, like everyone else. You couldn’t have known any better.”

“I felt it,” Bill admits. He averts his gaze so as not to see the look on Eddie’s face. He’s hardly allowed himself to focus on this, and to say it to another person… “I always felt like something was missing, but I never let my… I th-thought it was just… I pushed myself away from everyone because it made it easier to pretend I was imagining things, but I always knew you were missing, even if I didn’t know it was you who was missing. When I saw you today, it all just… it clicked into place and I re-re- _remembered…”_

“It’s a lot,” Eddie agrees, “remembering.”

He lets Bill stammer through his explanation. Has always let him finish a thought, even if it took three minutes longer than it should have. Bill liked that about him, his best friend, who didn’t see his stutter as an issue or something to mock. How could he have forgotten him? How could he have thought all his issues started and ended with his little brother?

“You seem to have ah-ah-acclim-acclim- _adapted_ to it nicely.”

“I hit Richie with a baseball bat so hard I knocked him unconscious,” Eddie replies wryly. “I think it took me a little bit, but anything’s better than here, so… I guess it was just easy to believe when I wanted out so badly.”

Bill nods, casting his eyes around the room and imagining living in a place like this for years, all alone—just blank walls and old memorabilia: band posters he’d long have outgrown had he been given the chance, comic book characters that have died and been resurrected into something else, books from their old English classes. It’s bland and boring, with no touches of Eddie at all, not even in the sheets or the paint. It’s just… it’s a room.

“Did you always want out?” Bill asks. “Did you know from the start this wasn’t where you were suh-suh-supposed to be?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” Eddie moves about, from the mirror to his desk, fingering a pile of envelopes he seems to adamantly ignore. “I’ve always felt like I never belonged here, so it was a thought I always had, but I was afraid for a while. Of the dark. Of any noises. My arm was broken for so long I couldn’t do anything anyway, so I got used to being holed up here, watching from the window, and my mom… she scared me so much about what happened to me that I was—I was nervous. I believed her when she said it was scary out there, that bad things could happen… I can’t believe how easy it was to just… to never step foot outside again, to _listen_ to her bullshit like I always did. It’s like she said it and I believed it was right. I believed she was protecting me from whatever was out there.”

“Sh-she was, a little,” Bill says. “There _is_ something to be protected fr-from, but she can’t help you. Not like this.”

“No.” Eddie pulls a box from his closet and overturns it, a flurry of folded papers covering his bedsheet. “And especially not when I need to be protected from her. She drugged me. She hid me. She _lied_ to me. Made me think there was something wrong with me because I wasn’t who she wanted.” He swallows roughly, fingers curling around his palm as he lifts them to scratch at his face. “Can you hand me those?”

He means the envelopes. Bill reaches for them, ripped open already, Richie’s practically incoherent writing on the front. “You want to cover that thing up?” he asks, indicating to Eddie’s face. “K-k-keep you from trying to touch it.”

Eddie tugs open an envelope and flips open a card, looking from it to the squares of notebook paper around him. He sighs angrily through his teeth and rips the card up, letting the shreds fall to his feet. He continues this process for three more envelopes before saying to Bill, “She tried to fix me, so no. I want it like this. I want everyone to see. I want _her_ to see. It, too.”

“Right,” Bill says. “Wh-what are you doing?”

“She lied to me about Richie too,” Eddie tells him. “I know what is real and what’s not, but I just… I want to see how far she thought she could take it.”

The pile of envelopes dwindles, succumbing to pieces on the floor. Eddie puts the other papers, the tinier ones, back into the shoebox as gently as he can. Bill catches a glimpse of a few—short conversations, reminders, compliments. Jokes.

“None of them match,” Eddie says. It’s hard to figure out if he’s talking to Bill or himself, his voice is so low, so contemplative. It possesses an angry bite Bill is surprised to hear from him. “I used to read these obsessively, these notes.” He sifts a hand through the box’s contents. “I didn’t know they were for me until Richie showed up and we went through them, but… a part of me wanted them to be. I wanted to know someone lov—cared for me like this. I’d only ever known what my mother’s definition of love was and it’s not right. I know that now.” He pauses, lifting a paper up to read it. He closes it tight in his palm, knuckles turning white like he can print it to his skin. “I think I’ve always known that. I think that’s why I always tried to never be here.” 

“He does love you,” Bill tells him. “I didn’t know until t-today, but he must’ve always. What I remember, he was always on your suh-side, always sticking up for you.” He pats the pocket of his jeans, produces the pink slip of paper Stan had given him, and hands it over. “I don’t know what this says, but Stan th-thinks Richie would want you to read it. After everything.”

Eddie’s eyes flash a golden sort of color at the mention of Richie’s name, his fingers trembling as he reaches out, practically snatching the thing from Bill’s hand.

And he does—snatch it, that is. Bill feels the cut of paper slicing his fingertips.

He drops to his knees, smoothing out the wrinkles, and devours the words on the page. Bill watches him, taking a step back, giving him space, like he’s interfering on something intimate. Eddie pulls another folded note from his box and presses it against the letter, pink pale and pretty against the faded white. A weak whimper escapes him, which he clamps down on, biting his lip. His pupils move fast across the page, his fingers pressing to the words, trying to drink them in.

“It matches,” he breathes. “None of the others—”

“—you ruh-ruh-really thought he didn’t feel that way?”

“I mean, logically speaking, my mother _was_ right,” Eddie says, voice clipped. Clinical. “How can he—any of you—feel _anything_ towards me after all this time?”

Bill smacks his lips, pressing his stinging fingers together, and squats low to match Eddie’s height. “The same way you know,” he says quietly, deliberately. He’s determined to get this right, to get the words out without fuss or stutter. “We _know_ you. You know us. Years can pass without a single word, without anyone reaching out, but we’re Losers, Eddie. We’re a _family.”_

“But my mom—”

“—she’s family, too,” Bill says. “But we’re the family you chose. There’s a difference. You chose to love us, faults and all, and we chose to love you back, no matter what kind of love it is. Whatever she’s said to you is bullshit. Being a Loser—that’s the only thing that’s ever mattered. It’s a bond deeper than anything, including the magic that runs through this town. It isn’t an insult. Not anymore. It’s a state of being. It’s a promise.” His throat burns at the effort, his mind whirling as it tries to keep up, to keep his tongue loose and his words free. “A promise that we’ll love each other until the day we die. It’s the seven of us, and we may grow and change and become different than who we were at twelve, but at the end of the day, at the end of all time, it will _always_ be the seven of us. I think how we feel about each other will remain the same. Will grow with us. Will never change, even as the circumstances do. So I love you like I did when I was five, and like I did when I was thirteen, and Richie loves you the same, like no time has passed because, to us, no time _has_ passed. We will always love you—whatever’s inside here.” He places his palm on Eddie’s chest, where his heart beats hard, steady, and _true._ “This always remains the same.”

Eddie looks at him, eyes wide and bright and _swimming,_ and his arms are wrapped tight around Bill’s neck, squeezing him close. Papers crumble behind his head, Eddie’s nose pressing to his collarbone. Bill holds him back, clutches him through years of hugs he’d never gotten to give, not even remembering the last one he and Eddie’d shared. They’d been made fun of a lot back then, expressing emotion and acting like _girls,_ like _fairies,_ like whatever Bowers and his gang and Greta and her girls liked to mock them for. He doesn’t even think he hugged him once that summer—the summer they could’ve lost their lives.

He makes sure to add little extra to this one, just to make up for it.

“I missed how you always knew what to say,” Eddie mumbles into his neck. “I missed—I missed a lot.”

Bill runs his hands through his hair, mussing it like he used to. “We’ll have tuh-tuh-time to make it all up,” he says. “We just have to geh-eh-eh-get—”

“—oh, would you look at this?” Sonia Kaspbrak’s voice cuts through his, malicious and sharp, like a knife tinged in poison. Bill hasn’t heard her in years, but he doesn’t remember her being so _mean._ “If one doesn’t come, the other does. Hello, Bill.”

“Huh-huh-hi, Mrs. Kaspbrak,” Bill greets, slowly untangling himself from Eddie. “How have you beh-een?”

Sonia casts a distasteful look at him. “Still stuttering, I see,” she says. “Speech therapy hasn’t helped with that?”

“ _Mom,”_ Eddie admonishes. He reaches out and squeezes Bill’s knee.

Sonia zeroes in on this motion like a hawk, eyes narrowing to slits. “Him, too, Eddie?” She clicks her tongue. “But then I shouldn’t be so surprised.”

Eddie lets go. “What’s _that_ supposed to mean?” he snaps, getting to his feet. His hands, once so gentle, ball into tight fists at his side.

“Just what I’ve heard,” she says lightly, as if talking about the weather. “Gays are… _promiscuous,_ are they not? That’s why they’ve got all those diseases. I tried to keep you clean, Eddie-bear, I really, really did, but these boys… You’ve always been diseased, haven’t you? You’ve never been clean a day in your life.”

Eddie’s knuckles go white. His cheeks redden.

Bill finds himself standing, snapping, “Now that’s totally uncalled for, Mrs. Kaspbrak.”

“ _Two_ Prince Charmings…” she muses. “Always someone else to fight your battles for you, my dear. Is that why you’ve kept them around?”

“They don’t fight my battles,” Eddie returns stiffly. “I never needed anyone to—they’ve given me the strength to be the person I’ve always been, deep inside. They’ve been the ones on my side, reminding me I _am_ brave, and you… you… kept me from them for that exact reason! You hated that I didn’t need you. That I could do things on my own. You wanted me small and needy and unable to say no—”

“—alright, alright,” Sonia cuts in. “If you want me to be the bad guy so much, I’ll be the bad guy. I’ve heard your little plans, Bill, but unfortunately the two of you will not be making it out of this house.”

The _alive_ is implied.

 _Heavily_ implied.

“Henry!” she calls. He materializes at her side as if by teleportation. “Dispose of them.”

Bill darts out of Bowers’ way, catapulting over Eddie’s bed, narrowly missing the sharp slice of his precious knife, and comes to a slamming thud against the other wall. A framed photo, some sort of still life, comes crashing to the ground, breaking into pieces. He scrambles to grab the biggest one, arming himself, and rolls beneath the bed to avoid any further attacks. He comes out the other side to Bowers’ heavy boots and the dirty denim of his jeans and shields his face as the blade comes down to slice his face. Henry gets his forearm instead, deep into the flesh by his elbow, and he yowls, the pain excruciating as Henry twists the knife in a circle, inflicting as much damage as he can.

“Missed,” Bowers murmurs unhappily, pulling it out. He wipes the blood on his thigh; in his distraction, Bill ignores the way his arm shrieks in agony and crawls away, elbows dragging, arm staining the carpet red.

Henry reaches out to grab his ankle, wrapping his fingers around it and pulling, and Bill kicks out, smashing his foot in his face? his leg? his groin? Whatever it is has Henry letting go, cursing wildly, and Bill stumbles to his feet, pressing his hand to his elbow. The skin is gooey and sticky, liquid seeping between his fingers, but he keeps his eyes trained on Bowers, trying to anticipate his next move.

He’s nothing if not predictable, so when he throws himself forward, Bill ducks to the left, sticking his foot out. Henry trips over him, stepping on Bill’s leg, and begins to fall forward. Bill crawls backwards as quick as he can, aiming for the door, for something more than the piece of glass that’s only cutting up his hand.

Bowers catches his footing, snarling to find where Bill’s gone, arm coming out in a swooping arc, no doubt to pin his knife right between Bill’s eyes, when there is a gasp of surprise, sharp and wet.

Bill looks up, wide-eyed, not sure where the sound came from or where Eddie is, and lets out a breath that feels too old, too heavy, to be his own. His second chance— _their_ second chance—is not destroyed; Eddie stands there, near the window Bill had climbed through, unharmed except for the scar on his cheek and the emotions warring across his face. It looks as if he cannot choose which one to feel the most: shock, anger, sadness, relief. Bill follows his gaze to see what could possibly be causing this to find—

Oh.

Bowers’ knife made contact with _someone,_ alright.

Sonia Kaspbrak’s neck bleeds, a cut long and deep spread across the width of it. She grasps at it tightly with both hands as if _that_ can close the wound.

“Eddie-bear,” she gurgles, wide eyes searching for him wildly.

He steps from the safety of the window. Does not speak until she finds him. “I hate that name,” he says. He eyes her curiously.

She takes a deep, struggling breath, more of a wheeze than anything. “Eddie,” she amends. “Call an ambulance.”

“You never let me use the phone,” Eddie replies.

“Please. Help me.”

“It’s all the way downstairs,” he continues, almost like he doesn’t hear her pleas, wet with blood. “By the time I got down there, called them, and they got here, you’d be dead.” It’s not clear to Bill if Eddie is upset about this or not.

Meanwhile, Bowers loses interest in killing Bill, watching the exchange with rapt attention. His knife slowly enters his back pocket, where he cuts right through, the blade hanging out of his jeans.

“Use the magic,” Sonia suggests instead. “The… the song. Heal me.” She loosens her grip on her throat. The expanse of pale skin is smeared in blood.

Bill does not know how she is not dead yet. The wound, from what he can see, looks fatal. Too deep and long for even this conversation.

Eddie scoffs. “So now you want to believe in it?” he asks. “When it benefits you?”

“I’ve always believed, Eddie-b— _Eddie,_ or else I wouldn’t have hid you from it.” She takes an unsteady step towards him, pitching forward, and drops slowly to her knees. “From your friends, who were desperate to play with it. It is not yours to have or to use. It is too dangerous for a boy. It couldn’t even save your father, a grown man who knew more about it than any—”

“—but it’ll save _you?”_ Eddie interrupts, incensed as always when his father is mentioned. “Why would it be any different now?”

She covers her neck again, reaching a gory hand for Eddie, who flinches back. “You control it now,” she says. “I can see it. Feel it. Can’t you? You have more power over it than any other person in Derry. You can do more than—”

“— _then why would I use it on you?”_ Eddie demands, frightening in his quiet ferocity. “When all you’ve ever done is keep me from my friends, from fun, from _life?_ What reasons do you have for me to waste my power on you?”

“I am your _mother,”_ she tries, but the golden energy that pulses around Eddie turns a violent shade of black, angered at the sentence. The thought.

Bill watches the magic, swirling and popping around him, Eddie’s grasp on it tenuous at best. It follows the call of his emotions and Eddie is—Eddie has a years’ worth of issues to deal with in a short span of time.

Henry gasps with delight, following the movements.

“Are you?” Eddie asks. “Or are you just the woman who birthed me? My sicknesses were fake, my medicines placebos, and your concern wrongly placed. You stopped caring about _me_ a long time ago.” He shakes his head, swallowing hard. His eyes are unreadable, his jaw set taut. “There are other people who love me, other people worth using this magic on.”

Sonia blinks over and over, taking in wet gasps of breath. “You’re just going to let me die? After all I’ve done to make sure you lived?”

“ _Survived,”_ Eddie corrects. “The only time I’ve ever lived was when I was with them.” He points to Bill, crouched by the door. He really wishes he didn’t do that, Henry Bowers turning to look, face brightening as he remembers Bill’s existence. But Henry turns away again, focused on Eddie, who is… just letting his mother bleed, stock still and spine straight. “My friends. _They_ raised me, made me who I am, reminded me I am more than the house I live in. You are my blood, but _they_ are my family, and I will protect them, not you.” He pauses, mouth quirking just a little, as if he’s amused by the whole thing. “After all, Ma, you made the choice to be in the same house as Henry Bowers. You know, I heard he lost his mind and killed his father.”

Bowers laughs, the sound reverberating off the walls, filling the space and making it smaller. “Where’d you hear that?” he asks. “I kept that under wraps. They haven’t even found the murder weapon.”

“It’s in your back pocket,” Eddie replies. “It’s not hard to put two and two together.”

Henry grins, still giggling. “Little _baby_ Kaspbrak,” he coos, “you know, I never knew we’d have so much in common the first time we met, but here we are.”

“We’re nothing alike,” Eddie snaps.

Bowers pulls the knife from his pocket, waving it about. Bill flinches though it is nowhere near him. “ _I_ killed my father. _You_ killed your mother. Seems like a pretty big similarity to me, but unfortunately our bond can’t stop me from getting you next…” He kicks at Sonia’s bare, motionless foot. “She wasn’t wrong, you know. The magic is strong in you and it can’t be. There’s a certain order to things that you losers fucked with four years ago and it can all be fixed if I just…” He taps the tip of his blade on each finger of his left hand. “It only takes one death, Eddie.”

“And it has to be mine?”

“You were always meant to die, my kindred spirit,” Bowers replies, voice whimsical and terrifying, like he’s under a trance. “It’s written in the stars… in every timeline… in all the universes… in every version of every one of your lives, you die… _but.”_ He stops suggestively, tapping his lower lip with the sharp tip of his blade. “I can offer you an alternative. A _trade._ A life for a life… a life for _yours…”_ He titters, the sound creeping up the length of Bill’s spine. He shifts, attempting to get to an upright position, not liking the way Bowers and Eddie are standing—close, combative, in arm’s reach. “You and Tozier can have the life he’s always wanted, the one he’s written about in these pathetic letters. You’ll be happy, and successful, and the curse will be broken—”

“—and It will awaken in twenty-whatever years and go after more kids. I know how this story ends,” Eddie returns. “A curse never ends with a trade. A curse ends when you destroy it from the inside out, and if _I_ have all this power, all this control, then _I’m_ the one to end it. The magic is mine. I am the magic.” At the mention of it, the colors around him pulsate, twist, as if pleased to be part of the conversation, as if pleased to belong to someone like Eddie. They are so tangible, so physical, that they recoil from the darkness that is Henry, wrapping tightly around Eddie’s limbs as if to protect him. “He’s afraid, I can tell. I can feel it. And you’re afraid, too, Henry. That’s why you killed your father, why you let It in. You feared him. He beat you. What else are you afraid of? What does he hold over you?”

“Nothing,” Bowers murmurs. “This is what I want. I chose this. I follow him willingly. He is my master and I am his servant; we have the same goals, the same desires… we long to rid the world of people like you. Of love.”

Eddie scoffs. “Then you picked the wrong group of people. Love is in the very foundation of who we are. You can’t fight magic like that.”

“And yet…” Bowers starts, toying with him, words a malicious tease. “You forget. You splinter. Love is a feeble, fickle thing. It can be destroyed and I will destroy it and this town will be everything it was destined for and more.”

Bill pushes himself to his feet, having had enough. “You don’t n-need to do anything more to make Duh-Duh-Derry a breeding pit of hatred,” he says. “It already is. Leave it buh-buh-be, Henry. Let go of It. Live a life you can be proud o-of.”

Henry’s mouth curls into a snarl. “Oh, the stuh-stuh-stuh-stuttering simpleton is trying to lecture me! Whatever will I do, knowing you disapprove? I’m not one of your fag friends. I won’t listen to everything you say. I won’t follow you like gospel.”

“I don’t— _they_ don’t. I’m just reminding you there’s more to life than a cuh-clown in the sewers—”

“— _he is more than that!”_

“All It is is a clown in the sewer,” Bill replies calmly. “It cannot give you what it promises. It can only make you fuh-float.”

“Floating is one step closer to godhood,” Bowers snaps. “It is an _honor_ to float for my master. To be deemed _worthy._ I have never been worthy in my life. You will _not_ take this chance from me. If you will not give me the life to take, I will take both of yours, a sacrifice to It, proving to him I am his greatest supporter. You will die like your pathetic brother, and I will cut Eddie-bear to pieces, the magic bleeding out of his wrists and disappearing forever, consumed by It. The world will be what it is meant to be and I will rule alongside him in the promised land.”

Bill barks out a startled laugh. “You want to _rule_ Derry?”

“First Derry, then the world,” Bower explains. “As his right-hand man, I will kill you all, I will prove myself, and I will be the supreme—”

“—supreme _shithead,”_ Eddie snaps, hitting him hard in the back of the head with the heavy, golden stand of a broken lamp. He drops it to the ground as if burned, and then picks it back up, clutching it, the weapon it is. “Is he fucking serious?”

Bill pads over, looking for the rise and fall of Bowers’ chest and ignoring the lack of one in Eddie’s mother. “The pull of It is so strong it can make you crazy…” he murmurs, thinking of Georgie’s shouts, twisted and insane. ( _YOULLFLOATTOOYOULLFLOATTOOYOULIEDANDIDIEDYOULIEDANDIDIED)_ “Is there anyone else here?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie replies. He steps over both his mother and Bowers, practically insignificant in his eyes, the way he always was to them. “But we can’t stay here. There’s only one place left to go.”

“The Neibolt House,” Bill agrees.

“I think I can do it,” Eddie says. “Get rid of It. I think I know—”

“—we,” Bill corrects. “ _We_ can do it. You don’t have to do anything ah-ah-alone ever again.”

Eddie scrambles into his closet, tugging a backpack from the dusty shelf, and overturns that shoebox of notes into it. He crosses the room, grabs a tape from his radio and the case it came in, and puts that inside too, zipping it into the front pocket. He heaves it onto his shoulders, gripping that lamp stand tight in his fist. “And if I have to?”

“We’re a _t-t-t-team,_ Eddie,” Bill insists. “There will always be another way. We can do it together, the sev-seven of us.”

“You’re right,” Eddie says, but Bill isn’t _that_ unobservant enough to hear the falsity in his voice. “We should go. We don’t know how long he’ll stay down.”

Bill nods, creeping forward to snatch the knife from Bowers’ lax grip. It’s heavier than he anticipated, weighted at all ends. The blade gleams. He pulls the case off Eddie’s pillow and wraps it around it, tucking it safely and securely in his pocket. “And your mother?” he asks, nodding towards her prone, lifeless form. He doesn’t like looking at her, blood already hardening around her slit throat, staining the white skin of her neck, the collar of her shirt.

She’d always been so awful, and he can’t imagine what Eddie must’ve gone through all these years, but…

Eddie spares her a short glance, shoulders taut. “Leave her,” he says. “Maybe she’ll disappear when the house does.”

“The house _disapp—”_

“—it did last time, when Richie and I left,” Eddie says. “I don’t know why it’s here now, but I have a feeling I’ll never see it again, now that she’s…”

And he’s right, his voice trailing off; the walls shake, and the ceiling crumbles, bits of plaster and wood falling from above. Another tremor sends Eddie’s mirror crashing into the wall, breaking into seven years of bad luck, and Bill surges forward, grabbing his hand. Eddie holds on tight, squeezing, their palms immediately slick with sweat.

Eddie and Bill emerge into the hall, which shifts back and forth like a carnival ride, sending them tripping left and right, unable to find stable footing. Eddie leads the way, balancing on his toes, and rushes down a collapsing staircase, steps disintegrating the moment their feet touch them. Bill yelps, foot falling through into nothingness, and Eddie pulls him out, accidentally throwing him down the stairs in his effort to free him.

Bill lands hard on his shoulder, cracking a wooden floorboard. The telephone rings, shrieking and sparking, like wires have been cut, and the television flickers on. A chorus of children’s voices fills the chaos around them, a chant to _KILL YOUR FRIENDS KILL YOUR FRIENDS IF YOU CAN’T DO IT I CAN._

“Duh-don’t listen to it,” Bill shouts over the din, hand on Eddie’s shoulder as the smaller boy freezes, ears perked in the direction of the living room. “It is trying to pull you in, like Bowers. Keep you here so you die in this house. He doesn’t want you to leave it. Come on.”

Eddie shakes himself free, curls his hand around Bill’s elbow and pulls them down, narrowly missing a falling ceiling fan. “Almost there,” he mumbles, tugging him along, the two of them crawling as comfortably as they can.

The floor ruptures, sinks, pieces of furniture falling deep into the earth. The chair Sonia loved is lost forever to the darkness that swallows up a rug, the couch, and a shelf of books. A table wobbles, magazines and papers flying about, but there is something more there, something _else—_

“Eddie,” Bill blurts, loud enough for him to hear. He squeezes his ankle where he’s holding it, afraid to separate. “Those envelopes… they weren’t real, but are those—” He points, a stack of maybe twenty somehow still perfectly in place, as if begging to be saved.

“I don’t need them,” Eddie says. “The one I have… it’s enough. It’s more than enough.” He takes a deep, shaking breath, and turns his head, looking back at Bill. His eyes flash like molten gold, the magic surging through his body. “On the count of three we’re going to run to that front door and we’re not going to stop until we’re free of this street, okay? Do you understand the plan? I want you to _sprint.”_

Bill nods, a part of him feeling like he should go after those letters, important pieces of a life Eddie never got to experience, and when Eddie shouts _THREE!_ Bill makes the split decision to break away from him and the plan. He slides into what remains of the living room like he’s on the baseball diamond, trying to get home, and grabs at what he can, hopping from place to place like he’s playing a game of _The Floor Is Lava._

It’s harder to get out from here than it was at the base of the stairs, but Bill barrels through anyway, closing his eyes and covering his face as he crashes through Eddie’s large front window. He comes to a rolling stop on his porch, coughing, covered in tiny shards of glass. Eddie waits for him in the middle of the street, frowning fiercely at his deteriorating house, and slaps Bill hard on the shoulder when he shows up at his side.

“That _wasn’t_ the plan!” he shouts, eyes scanning Bill for obvious injury, for… for possession, maybe, like he could lose himself in the destruction of that house. “I said I didn’t need them! Why would you—why would you risk _everything_ just to give me old letters when I already know well enough what they say? What he means?”

“Why only know,” Bill pants, shoving them into Eddie’s chest, “when you can read them, too?” He takes in a hard, wheezing breath. “I did a lot wr-wrong by you, Eddie, and I’m gonna spend the rest of my life making up for it. It’s not muh-much, but she kept these from you for a reason. Don’t you want to know wh-why?”

Eddie’s cheeks flush. Bill is happy to see the magic has lessened in his gaze and even in the buzz of his skin, like he does not need all that power anymore, away from Sonia, and Bowers, and the house. It’s just Eddie again, the Eddie he’s always been—just a little bit tougher. A little bit stronger.

“Thanks, Bill,” he murmurs. He swings his backpack around and tucks them in with the rest of the notes. “It’ll be nice to know that someone…” He clears his throat, face reddening even further, and Bill lets him have this thought, lets him keep it to himself. There will be a time when Eddie can share things with him again and when he does, Bill will listen, just as he always did. “Where to next?” he asks. “The house, to the Losers?”

“I don’t know,” Bill admits. “I just feel like walking…” He turns, like a compass, spinning until he points. “That way.”

Eddie adjusts his grip on the stand of his lamp, hooks a hand around a strap of his backpack, and nods. “Seems like the right way.”

They head away from Eddie’s house, or what remains of it, and leave the street and the vicinity behind, walking towards something. Anything. Nothing.

“You let your mom bleed to death,” Bill says as casually as possible, reminded by it as a trickle of blood drips from a cut on his forehead into his eye.

“Yeah.” Eddie wets his lips. His scar, despite being healed, looks raw and ragged. “Let’s unpack that later.”

4

From above the rubble, a hand is held out. Dirty fingers grip (relatively) clean ones, the weight of the other helping him free from the debris. Henry Bowers’ fingernails are cracked and broken, bleeding, but he doesn’t seem to notice nor care.

“Where’ve you been, fuckface?” he asks, brushing soot from his pants.

Criss shrugs. “Watching the others. I think we have a problem.”

“Yeah,” Bowers snaps. “Baby fucking faggot Kaspbrak escaped.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s a—that’s a problem,” Criss agrees, “but it’s not just Eddie we have to worry about now. It’s that Uris kid, too. We have to get rid of him, and then Kaspbrak. I saw what they were doing. He figured it out.”

“Who?”

“Uris. Stanley Uris.” Criss waves a hand about, creating a shape that is nothing like a person. “Jewish kid.”

“Ah.” Bowers pats his pockets for his knife and, unable to find it, hisses a curse. “Fuck.”

 _You know where it is,_ It’s voice murmurs in his ear. He thinks he can see his face in the sun, a bright, startling clown. _You know who has it._

This calms Henry down somewhat. Clears his head, at least, to focus on Criss’s information. “We’ll kill him first, then, before they can get any ideas. Where are they?”

 _It is better if you meet them,_ It provides. _The house. They’ll be there shortly._

“Yes, Master,” Henry says dutifully.

They head west, Criss following along at a more subdued pace, Bowers never noticing the odd way he watches him.

5

Stan feels better when there are lists, which is evidenced by the huge pieces of paper taped over old family photos on Richie’s basement wall. His neat block letters take up almost every inch of space, lines zigzagging and crisscrossing over words and plans. But what Richie is most focused on is the bracketed list of their respective fears.

It makes him nauseous, having them spelled out so simply… so _crassly_ like that.

 _STAN—THINGS NOT MAKING SENSE (LACK OF REALITY), DROWNING, FRIENDS DYING, BEING TOO SCARED TO HELP_

_MIKE—FIRE, ORANGE BIRD, ALWAYS BEING ALONE, NOT HAVING THE ANSWERS/CHOICE_

_BEV—BLOOD, FATHER, GROWING UP (GROWING OLD), NEVER BEING MORE THAN I AM NOW_

_BEN—WEIGHT, LACK OF LOVE, BEING LEFT OUT/FORGOTTEN, TRAPPED IN SOMETHING I AM NOT (MUMMY IMAGERY/BURIED ALIVE)_

_RICHIE—TEENAGE WEREWOLF, SEXUALITY (BEING SEEN/KNOWN), LOSING EVERYTHING THAT MATTERS, RUINING FRIENDSHIPS BECAUSE OF HARDHEADEDNESS, LOSING EDDIE_

Richie blinks at it, swallowing hard at the things that make him up, that make his friends up, and wonders if that’s all they are. All they’ll ever be. Is he nothing but his fears? Will he ever become _more_ than the things that terrify him?

“This is so embarrassing,” he mutters, biting hard into the crust of his cold pizza. He feels like his fears, his insecurities, scream louder than the others. Sexuality, ruining friendships, losing Eddie… They’re all there in the beat of his heart, in the crack of his ribs, piercing him where it hurts most. He’s spent so long being afraid of these things, of _living_ these things, and seeing them written out in front of him…

He chews the bread so hard it hurts his jaw.

Mike slides in next to him, wrapping an arm around his shoulder. “I told you,” he says, “fear is natural. There is nothing wrong with it.”

“Oh, sure, yeah,” Richie grumbles. “You’re afraid of being _wrong.”_

“You know that’s not true,” Mike says, “and my biggest fear is being alone, if you want to know.”

Richie sniffs around a scoff, which he is aware is rude. “You love to be alone.”

“It’s not being _alone_ that I—maybe I should change it,” Mike says. “It’s being left out. Never being part of a group. Always being a loner, an outsider…” He swallows, forcing a smile. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. We can’t help the way we feel sometimes.”

“You could never be an outsider, Mikey,” Richie replies, twisting. He drops what remains of his crust onto his plate and grabs at his friend, trying to wrestle him into a hug that looks and feels more like a headlock. “You complete us! Without you, we’d be nothing, and not just because you know everything and have access to all these cool books and shit. You’re a Loser and nothing can change that.”

“And still sometimes I worry that I’m not,” Mike tells him. “But I have you guys to remind me if I ever get really low.” He points to Richie’s name. “That right there—that doesn’t change the fact that you’re an incredibly good friend, or that you care so much about everything. It doesn’t define you, and it doesn’t make you any less than who you are. We love you _and_ all of that. You wouldn’t be you without it and once you realize all of that is nothing to be afraid of, we’ll still love you all the same.”

“Do you plan on going into motivational speaking?” Richie asks.

“I was more interested in, like, veterinarian school, but I’m sure I can do both,” Mike replies. “You feel okay?”

Richie shrugs. “No,” he admits, and only because Mike’s got one of those kind faces you can’t lie to, no matter how hard you try. “I feel incredibly fucking shitty—and I have a pounding headache behind my eye. Thanks for _drugging me,_ by the way.”

Mike cups the back of his head, rubbing a thumb into his scalp, which doesn’t necessarily fix the issue in his head, but feels nice. “It’ll fade,” he says, “and you needed sleep. You wanna talk about any of those?” He jerks his chin towards the lists.

“It’s not that,” Richie says. “I—I know I’m all those things. I’ve always known what I’ve been afraid of. I just never wanted to share it. It’s… it’s that I got us in this situation that I feel so bad. It didn’t go any of the ways I expected, and everyone’s gotten hurt somehow, and I completely fucking demolished Bill’s wish if what your book says is true. I’m a fuck up. We’ve always known that. Add that to the list: _afraid I’ll never not be a fuck up.”_

“You’re not a fuck up,” Mike replies.

“I’m not?” Richie asks, biting back a scoff of self-pity. “Look at where we _are,_ Mikey. Turning ourselves into nothing but our fears, sitting in my basement, eating cold pizza and pretending to play fuckin’ Monopoly.”

“I am _actually_ playing Monopoly,” Ben says. Richie hadn’t known he was listening. They probably all are, the snoops.

“ _Cheating,”_ Stan corrects.

“I do not _cheat_ at _Monopoly,”_ Ben defends. “I just arm myself early on, which you think is a bad investment, but you’re always bankrupt by the time I…”

“I reversed everything. I basically turned back time. The magic is…”

“The magic has a mind of its own,” Mike says. “It just lets us play with it. We were always meant to come back here. These scars are proof of that. None of this was _just_ you. It was us, just like it always is.”

Stan, disgusted at Ben’s strategy, comes to Richie’s other side. His knee knocks against Richie’s, but between the two of them, he feels comforted. Safe. Nothing can hurt Richie when sandwiched between Stan and Mike, the same way no one can lift his spirits like Ben, or defend him like Bev… and Bill, whose life he fucking ruined.

“The book said more than that, if you’d read more of it instead of throwing it across the room,” Stan says ruefully. “It’s fine, if you’re worried about preserving it.” 

“I mean, I didn’t know it existed until I went home to get…” Mike juts a thumb towards the cache of weapons they’ve got stacked along a different wall: an axe, the bloody baseball bat, a cattle gun, and the poker from his fireplace. “It appeared on the table, open to entries about the bridge. I imagine it’ll disappear when it’s no longer needed.” He clears his throat like this is a normal occurrence. “What’d it say?”

“There was this interesting—the magic has a mind of its own, yes, but it can choose to entangle itself with others if it feels so inclined. It did, once, in ‘27. The person it picked got these perfect days for about a week until it ended.” Stan stretches his legs out in front of him. “And back in your room, I noticed…” He pauses, as if to figure out how best to word this, which isn’t a typical thing for Stan. He doesn’t sugarcoat. “The magic has taken to you. I can’t figure out how, but when you panicked, it just—it exploded.”

Richie blinks. His mouth tastes stale, gritty with yeast. “I’m having a terrible time,” he says. 

“What happened when it ended?” Bev asks, forking over money when she lands on Ben’s hotel. She’s the only one really playing with him, which is also about right. 

“Well, uh, the guy… he died—“

“—fan- _fucking-_ tastic,” Richie groans, falling to his back. The carpet is itchy. 

“You did get what you wanted,” Ben says. “So maybe that’s the perfect part.”

“At the expense of literally everything else,” Richie says. “Tell me there’s more to it than just a perfect day and a gruesome death, because when I imagine dying it’s much cooler than the house on Neibolt.”

“The person who told the story was of the mind that this guy was a real bad dude,” Stan says. “Like, deserved the death he got bad. But what was interesting was that despite getting tangled with the magic, the magic didn’t like him, so it thwarted all his wishes and tried to, like, ruin his day. That’s not what’s been going on with you and Eddie. Bad shit keeps happening because it was always meant to happen but… the magic, when listened to…” 

“Gets us out of those situations,” Mike finishes for him. “Gets us to each other.” 

“So?” Richie asks the ceiling. “We’ve perfectly reconnected and I’ve perfectly saved all of our lives and I’ve perfectly kissed Eddie four times. At the end of the day today, I will be dead. Is that what you’re saying?”

Stan shoves him. 

Bev laughs. “You _counted?”_

“It’s been a fantasy of mine since my fucking balls dropped, Beverly,” Richie snaps, though without the bite it’s just sad. “Of course I counted.”

“I’m _saying,”_ Stan interjects loudly, “that the magic reminded us of our lost friend and our forgotten promise. It gave us back our family and the tools we need to finish this all off. It gave us a _plan.”_ He stands, heading towards the paper on the wall. 

Richie, jostled from the movement, supports himself on his elbows to watch him. “It also gave us inexplicable healing powers. Don’t forget that. It’s the most important.”

“I think knowing how to defeat It is most important,” Stan says, “but sure. That, too.”

He uncaps his marker, writing the two letter word as large as he can in the space he left over. Everyone has stopped what they were doing to watch him; Bev has Monopoly money clutched between her teeth. 

“We know how It operates. We know we have to defeat It. We know It is fearful that we’re all together, which means Eddie is and always has been a threat to It. In retrospect, separating was a terrible idea, and maybe Bill shouldn’t have left, but Eddie was gone to begin with and if there’s a world where I’m the scared, weakest link, there’s also one where Eddie’s vulnerable and easy to manipulate.” He underlines the name, the thing, twice. “It’s a shame the world we’re in now is not that one—for It, at least.” 

Ben dabs his lip with a napkin and trades a couple of houses for a hotel when Bev isn’t looking. “And in the worlds where… not that I’m saying you guys _are..._ but in those—?”

“Eddie and I don’t make it in those,” Stan says with the certainty of a man who has visited them all. “But this one… It does not have experience with this one. There aren’t… there’s just this one. It doesn’t… It doesn’t know where it came from.” Stan circles Richie’s name. “I think you made it, Rich, when you Wished for Eddie. You made something new, something _we_ can mold and create. This is _ours,_ this chasm. This rupture.” 

“Do you have plans to go into teaching?” Richie asks. He does not dwell on the insinuation that there are a number of worlds where both Stan and Eddie cease to exist. How is he meant to cope with that? It’s such a devastating loss. 

“No. Shut up.” 

Mike leans forward. “How do you know all this?”

“Much of it is speculation,” Stan replies, drawing lines from each of their fears to the large _IT_ towards the left. “A bit is from the book, or what I could glean from it. Those with good magic standing created their own worlds, where things happened the way they ought to—“

“—and you decided to lead with the guy who _dies?”_ Richie demands. 

“I wanted to make sure you were listening,” Stan says. “You can get lost in your brooding.”

“True,” says Bev. 

“The rest, though, is from when we almost drowned,” Stan finishes. “When I saw the Deadlights, which are explained in the book as well, as branches of reality and time and dimension. There are three, and they showed me—continue to show me—pathways to take and routes to go down. Kind of like a map. All the world, all the universes… I know them. I know what to avoid.” He turns to face them. “I have a hard time figuring out if these Lights are good or bad, but I am going to use them to my advantage.”

“This makes you just as much a threat to It as Eddie,” Ben remarks. “Have you considered that the qualities you named for yourself—weak, scared—and Eddie—vulnerable, easily manipulated… maybe you’re seeing what It _wants_ you to see so you can’t rise to your fullest potential? You two have the singular ability to defeat It so It squashes you down, makes you second guess yourselves, puts you in situations where you don’t see the point…”

Bev cocks her head to the side. “Which makes the rest of us—what? Disposable?”

“No,” Ben says. “You, Richie, Mike, and Bill—despite what’s written up there, you’ve always known who you are. You’ve always had a very strong sense of self.”

“So have you!” she insists. “Ben, don’t sell yourself short.” 

“I’m nothing special,” he says, “just a kid who fell into your laps.” 

Richie shakes his head. “Not true. Maybe at first but you’ve proved yourself ten times over. You’re the builder, Ben. You take things and make them work. You took us and made us all fit together. You’re just as important. You’ve just got a tiny self esteem issue. We can beat that out of you.”

Ben snorts. “I’ve had enough violence today alone, I think.”

“Fair,” says Richie. “I’ll find another way.”

“He’s right, Ben,” Mike agrees. “You know who you are, too, and who you are is great.” He smiles. “Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

“This is starting to sound like an intervention,” Ben mumbles. 

“Oh, no, an intervention would be like the time Stan yelled at me and Bev for chain smoking in ninth grade and created an entire presentation about the health risks,” Richie says. “This is just—us supporting you. A Ben party. When this is over we should have a real one. I call wearing denim on denim.”

Ben’s cheeks flush bright red. “I wore that _once—“_

“—six times including last week,” Bev lists off. 

“I mean, alright.” It’s clear Bev’s attention is getting to him, the red seeping to every part of his face. Richie wants to take a picture; embarrassed Ben is _too cute._ “But I was trying to say that maybe Stan is someone we should be diligent in protecting. He knows the most so we should make sure he’s there every step of the way. We can’t lose Stan at Neibolt.”

“We can’t split up,” Richie insists. “All of this happened when we lost Eddie in that house. If we aren’t all together, It’ll already have the upper hand. It has to be the seven of us.”

“That much is obvious,” Bev replies. “We’re the Three Musketeers plus four.”

“So, Stan, you’re standing up there for a reason,” Mike reminds them all, and their attention shifts back. “What’s the plan?”

“We take _these”—_ Stan pokes at each individual fear—“and we do not let It use them against us. Now I want to try something, and it’s going to be uncomfortable, but… Bev, if faced with your father, how would you move past him? How would you make that overarching, enormous fear small? How would you take away its power?”

Bev sniffs, tossing her shoulder-length hair behind her, and says fiercely, “I’d remember that he was always nothing but a bully. That he made me feel like everything was my fault, that he hurt me because _he_ felt bad. Because _he_ hurt. I would tell him that I hated him and that I couldn’t be scared of someone as spineless as he is. That he is _scum_ and I am better off without him and no one else will ever or _can_ ever hurt me like that again. I won’t let them.”

“Wow,” Richie breathes. 

She grins. “Therapy has been really good for me.”

Stan makes them go down the line, each fear they listed and some they weren’t comfortable mentioning until then, breaking them apart to their tiniest pieces. To fragments of what they really are. At the end of the excruciating exercise, they’ve pulled apart every layer, broken every piece, and have turned It into the thing they’ve seen the most: _clown._

In Stan’s perfect, boxing penmanship, he draws two tiny lines, connecting the words. 

_IT = CLOWN_

_LOSERS = WINNERS_

“Not sure that’s how that last one works,” Richie says. 

Stan caps his marker. “It does now.” His head jerks to the side, eyes narrowing up the staircase, where the door is firmly shut. “It’s time,” he says, ominous and creepy. “Bill and Eddie are on their way to the house. We should meet them.”

“How do you _know_ that?” Richie asks, following his line of vision. He sees nothing special. 

_Because I told him,_ that other voice says. _We are nearing the end, Richie Tozier, and once you cross that threshold I am gone._

 _Gone?_ Richie thinks wildly. _Gone, like—? What do you mean gone?_

 _If all goes well, I will cease to exist,_ the thing says. _If all does not go well, I will still cease to exist._

 _Sounds promising,_ Richie comments. 

_It is the way of the world. Things end. I am hoping, for you, things are just beginning._ There is a wistful tone to the voice, like it truly believes that. Believes in Richie and the Losers. _I do not mix well with Evil, but I can give you a straight path to your friends. I can power you up._

_Power me—?_

A zing surges through Richie’s bloodstream. His head lightens; his limbs loosen; the aches and pains all disappear, as if it were days ago. He feels stronger. His heart beats truer. He feels like he can win a fight against Goliath.

 _Find your other half,_ Richie is instructed, words echoing through his clear head. Even his fucking shoulder feels brand new. _Stick close to him. The magics must be together._

_And Stan?_

_He is correct. If you are strong in conviction, strong in each other, nothing can go wrong. But remember Evil is tricky and the House is a maze. A carnival trick. Know who you are. Know each other. Above all, trust. It has been a pleasure, Richie Tozier. If I could make a Wish myself, I’d Wish for your perpetual happiness, but all I can do is watch and root for you._

The voice disappears. 

The moment is gone. 

Bev appears before him. “Bat or poker?”

Richie holds his hand out. “Bat.” The wood feels good in his fingers, smooth and just a little bit weighted. He knows the kind of damage this can create; his head used to be a prime example. It also makes him feel closer to Eddie, as dumb as that sounds. “Let’s kill this fucking clown.”

6

It’s just like he remembers, but somehow less. 

Eddie looks up at it, craning his neck so far back his face is parallel with the sky. It’s tall, looming, and dark, decrepit with boarded up windows, broken stairs, and rotted wood. The trees that remain seem to curl away from it; the grass is full of weeds, perpetually dead. Even the sky is darker here, the rules of nature turned off by its very existence, and yet—it’s just a house. 

That’s all it’s ever been. _A house._

Eddie’s arm smarts, remembering a time long ago, but he ignores the pain, gnashing his teeth together. It’s just a dumb house. It literally holds no power over him. Magic threads between his muscles and his tendons, crashing over him, urging him forward. It practically propels him, the desire to enter, to maim, to _destroy._

_You were made for destruction._

“I-it doesn’t seem like muh-uch,” Bill says beside him, “but it gives me the cuh-reeps.”

Eddie tilts his head to the side. His palm sweats against that piece of lamp he’s still clutching, which he ignores. He’s not afraid. He’s just… thinking through possibilities, ways to make this as simple and easy as the tingles in his body seem to think it will be. “It seems smaller,” he says. 

“Well,” Bill replies, casting a glance at Eddie. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the amusement there—and the smattering of tiny cuts covering his face. “You _ha-have_ grown some.”

“Thanks for noticing,” Eddie grumbles. He doesn’t much like the size jokes if they’re not coming from Richie. “I don’t think it’s that, though. I think it’s… it’s not as scary as before? It’s just—it’s a house, Bill, and a sewer clown lives here, but that’s it.” 

The house shrinks, just a bit. 

Bill says, “ _Huh,”_ like he can see it too. 

“Did that just…” Eddie lets his question die on his lips, mulling it over. He’s struck, then, by the way It had trembled in this house—in a dream? because that can’t be right—when It could not taste Eddie’s fear. How Pennywise and Bowers had said blood would have to do, how the illusions and tricks hasn’t been up to snuff when Eddie looked upon It…

The absence of fear… 

Fear is strength and without it…

“Admiring the view? I heard this house was on the market. Dirt cheap, too, but they won’t tell you why even though we all—oh, fuck, Eds, don’t hit me again today!”

Eddie drops the arm he hadn’t realized he’d risen, the lamp clutched tight in a white-knuckled fist, ready to strike. He was mid-swing, body still turning, and when he registers the voice, catalogs it, the lamp clatters to the ground but he keeps moving. He vaults himself into Richie, holding him tight, burying his face in his neck. He smells like sleep, pizza, and the briefest hint of cinnamon and chocolate. 

“Whoa there, buddy.” Richie coughs. “Ease up there. I can’t…” He wheezes. “...breathe.” 

Eddie loosens his arms but a smidge and revels in the feel of Richie’s heartbeat against his own chest. He is surprised by the weight of the emotion he feels and the tidal wave crashing through him. Every part of him longs to be close to him in almost a nauseating manner; if he could unzip himself from his body and snuggle into Richie’s he would. 

“Anyone want to gruh-greet me like that?” Bill asks, bemused. 

There’s the loud sound of items dropping and then Ben says, “Have at it.”

“Ooh, a Ben hug,” Bev remarks. “So lucky. He’s the best at them.”

Eddie does not care for Bill’s teasing of him, running into Ben like he is. He says, as softly as he can, “I love you.” 

Richie runs his fingers through his hair. “I love you too,” he says, just as quiet. “Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”

“Not any more than usual,” Eddie says. “I—what about you? Did—when they took me away, you were… Patrick—“

“Stan killed him so we’re good,” Richie says as cheerful as ever. 

Eddie pulls away from his neck. “Stan _killed—“_

_“What the fuck happened to your face?”_

“Oh,” Eddie says, waving it off. “Pennywise tried to eat it off, like always. Whatever. I’m more… _Stan.”_

Stan shrugs, smiling impishly. “He tried to kill Richie,” he replies. “What was I supposed to do? Let him _live?”_

Richie’s fingers are poking and prodding at Eddie’s cheek. Eddie slaps them away. “Don’t reopen it, asshole,” he snaps, “and your hands better be clean.” 

“We have weird healing abilities,” Richie says. 

“I don’t know how they work against infection, and I’m not dying because you’re _dirty,”_ Eddie retorts. He lets go of him but remains close, keeping him within a fingertip’s reach, and looks over his friends. 

They all look to be in relatively good shape, tired in the eyes and weary in their steps, as one always is when facing the Neibolt House the way they constantly are. But there’s a steel to their spines, a determination to the way they stand. Like they know what they’re facing and how to face it; the same feeling boils in his belly.

“Were you just going to walk in?” Mike asks. He has a cattle gun strapped over his chest.

For the first time, Eddie notices they’re all armed in some sort of way. Stan has an _axe._ The baseball bat is wedged between him and Richie.

“Well, yeah,” Eddie says. “It’s what we did last time.”

“And last time you broke your arm and never came back to the clubhouse,” Richie reminds him tersely. “It wasn’t one of our brightest ideas.”

“Are you saying you have a better plan?” asks Eddie.

“Not better,” Stan replies. “It’s the same one. We’re just… prepared this time.”

Eddie gazes at him, trying to pinpoint where the unfamiliarity stems from. He hadn’t felt like this when they reunited; he’d felt like Richie had, like the rest had—he’d felt like home. And now… the swirling in his gut urges him towards Stan the same way it calls out to the house behind him and Richie beside him. The same way it recognized Georgie and Bill. There’s a pull there, a difference that isn’t so much bad as it is startling and confusing. Eddie blinks, craning his neck, and focuses hard on Stan, on the air around him, which…

 _That’s_ what’s different.

“You experienced it too,” Eddie says.

“Different from you,” Stan replies. “The Deadlights.”

A cloud passes overhead at the mere sound of the name, darkening the town and stretching shadows far longer than they ought to be. Their heads lift, as if expecting an onslaught of rain, golf ball-sized hail, large strikes of lightening, but there is nothing—nothing but the house and each other.

“Which are—?”

“Time, dimension, reality, something that gives him all the answers,” Richie says quickly, jovially. “Turns out Stan really _is_ a know-it-all!”

Eddie wants to ask question after question, wants to get to the bottom of all the magics this town has to offer, but there’s no time for that. There’s never any time to truly understand, or perhaps there’s no _way_ to truly understand; he can feel it in his bones, the lack of opportunity. But Eddie trusts Stan, trusts him inexplicably, so he says, “Alright, what do you know now?”

“How to get past It,” Stan answers.

“But you’ve always known that,” Eddie says, brows crinkling.

Stan’s mouth quirks. The expression is hard to read. “Yes,” he says, “but now I know it works. Now I know”—the ground shudders beneath them, the front door of the house blowing open as if a big gust of wind was aimed right at it—“It knows I know it’ll work.”

The hinges of that door squeak. A groan—a moan?—a whimper?—a call, for sure—sounds from the dark depths beyond, pricking Eddie’s ears. It tugs at him right behind his belly button. Makes him turn on his heel, a half-step forward before he is pulled back by Richie’s hand at his elbow.

“Wait,” he murmurs.

“I have to go inside,” Eddie tells him. He has to climb those stairs and get into that kitchen, take the steps to the basement and down farther still, through the opening of a well until he hits the very bottom of the world. The core of Derry. Of the earth.

“I know,” Richie says back. “I feel the same way, but you have to listen to Stan.”

“Okay.” Eddie clears his throat, curling his hand into a fist, grounding himself. He shoves it in his pocket, twists to look at his friends, meeting Stan’s knowing eye. “Only tell me what’s going to be on the test.”

Stan goes on to explain what Eddie had been thinking initially, staring up at this thing that’s haunted him, both literally and figuratively. Larger than life, bigger than it had any right to be… all because they let it.

And when they don’t, it becomes smaller. It loses power. It becomes something they can fight, something they can destroy.

_You were made for destruction._

“Alright,” he says. “Stan, lead the way.”

Stan shifts in front, holding that axe like he knows what to do with it, though they do not move, keen to stare at the daunting house. Eddie doesn’t know what they all see, but his gaze pinpoints each entrance and exit, notes the gaping holes in the sides and the collapsing roof. His internal compass tugs at him, urges him to push Stan to the side and take his spot at the front. He fights it off, hissing at himself, telling himself to _take his fucking time._ He can’t just run into things like his body wants to. He can’t run into _this,_ not when he feels how important it is. 

“So we just… walk in?” Bev asks. “Is that really what we did last time?”

“Yeah,” Richie says. “Bill was a fuckin’ lunatic and marched right in here and of course Eddie followed him—“

“— _of course?—“_

“—I thought we drew straws—“

“—I definitely stayed out here—“

“—because you’re a _baby,_ Stan—“

“—I was thirteen and not too keen on dying _or_ in love with my best friend so I had some sense of self-preservation, which… I seem to have lost over the years—“

“—I duh-duh-didn’t want to _die—“_

“—then I don’t know what you call the summer of 1989 or anything leading up to it, one crazy plan after another—“

“—I missed this,” Ben says, sounding much like he means it. 

“I did not,” Bev says. “And the longer I stand here the less likely I am to go inside, so—“ She shoves through the bickering foursome, stomps up the broken steps, and disappears into the dark mouth of the Neibolt house. 

Ben hurries after her, a sprint of golden hair blinking away. Mike follows, patting Eddie on the shoulder, and adjusting the pull of the cattle gun at his neck. “You guys comin’?” he asks, easy smile playing at his mouth. “I can’t see the future or anything like that, but I can guarantee this isn’t how we’re meant to start our evening.”

“God, I know,” Richie replies, “I ordered the Chardonnay but they brought me Pinot Grigio instead.”

Bill snorts, the sound bursting from his chest, and he shoves Richie forward. “As if you’d eh-eh-ever order chardon-Chardonnay.”

“You’re right,” Richie says. “I’d like the Pinot Grigio better. Thanks, Big Bill.”

Eddie shakes his head, meeting Stan’s gaze, and grips both Richie and Bill’s wrists and tugging them forward. 

Each step he takes, each movement closer, has his heart racing and his blood thrumming. His hands feel clammy, sweaty with excitement—terrified and anxious excitement—and he’s not sure who he tightens his grip on, but at this point it doesn’t matter. Bill and Richie, both beside him again: their skin feels right under his hands. It’s almost like they are giving him the strength he needs to go through with this, the strength the magic doesn’t provide. 

It feels like he is swallowed whole when he crosses the threshold. It’s dark all around him, light only filtering in through the holes in the foundation, and it eerily reminds him of the house he’d just come from: suffocating, bleak, and imprisoning. The nauseating touch of evil is spread throughout the foyer, sprinkled on every bit of musty furniture, in every crevice. Eddie is especially tuned to it, but he can see Stan’s head whip around, locating threats in shadowy corners. 

Even Richie stiffens, on high alert. Eddie can’t see much of his face when he looks up. “Love what he’s done to the place,” Richie blurts, using his free hand to mess with his glasses—new ones, without the tape in the middle. “Is that—does that sign say _Friends Welcome Here?”_

“Yep,” Ben says, both he and Bev thankfully still in one piece only a few steps away. “But what’s worse is this. It was on the mantle.”

Bill takes hold of a dusty, cracked frame, and inhales sharply through his teeth. It whistles. “Th-th-this was on the muh-muh-mantle?”

Ben nods, wringing his hands. “Right there. In the middle.” 

“With this,” Bev adds. In her hand is a bundle of balloons, each a different color and sporting a different word. _Welcome home,_ two say, and seven more have each of their names written in permanent marker in what looks like their own handwriting. 

Eddie glances from photo to balloons, not sure which one makes his heart race more. His chest feels full, heavy, almost, looking at the strings in Bev’s hand, loosely held, and he can see them tightening their hold, not letting her go. He feels it all over, remembers the dreams, the blood-vomit, and the plasticky taste that coated his tongue for hours after. He opens his mouth to warn her, but his mouth feels dry, like it’s hard to swallow; he can’t get the words out. 

The picture, on the other hand… Richie grabs it from Bill, almost whacking Eddie in the ear with it, and brings it close to his face. “What the fuck is this?” 

“It’s us,” Bill says.

“Yeah, no shit, Sherlock,” Richie retorts. “I can—I can _see_ that, but these… these _X_ things. What are th—“ 

“—you know what they are,” Bill says patiently. 

“I most certainly do not,” Richie snaps, “but if I did, I would think they’d have something to do with getting rid of the person the _X_ is covering, and in this picture they’re over Stan and Eddie’s faces, which can’t be right—“

“—I _told_ you,” Stan begins to say, but he’s drowned out by Bev’s startled, piercing scream and a wet splatter as balloon after balloon pops.

Before any of them can make any moves, Bev is drenched. At her feet, the balloon carcasses lay, and she is covered from head to toe in blood, red and brown and runny. 

She blinks, lashes fluttering, and brings her hands up to wipe at her eyes, smearing the fluid around her cheeks. “I… does… does no one else not like being covered in blood?” she asks, voice rising. “Is it just me? Why is it just me?” 

Richie’s arm goes slack, the frame falling from his grip, which is fine, and he says warily, “I think this is a direct attack on your femininity and the fear your father instilled in you about growing older and no longer being his little girl.” 

“Right,” Bev says, after a beat. 

“What?” he asks in the bewildered silence that follows. “I listen.” He lets go of Eddie’s hand, scrambling out of his overshirt, a loud print of primary colors, and hands it to her. 

Bev is trembling, fingers catching on his, and Eddie watches Richie squeeze her hand before taking on the task himself, wiping at her face. The blood stains her even after he’s done, pale skin now a sticky shade of pink. The tender way Richie tries to pick the blood from the corners of her nose makes Eddie’s heart constrict almost painfully. 

“I’m not afraid of that,” she says softly, holding his wrist. 

“I know,” Richie replies, “but you were. At one point. And It knows that.” 

She nods, swallowing, and clutches his shirt close to her chest. “Yeah, yeah, you’re right,” she agrees. “It was just… startling, is all. I mean, I didn’t know they were going to explode like that.”

“I tried to warn you,” Eddie blurts out. The words hurt his throat like he’s forcing them past some sort of barrier that’s doing all it can to keep them back. “But I couldn’t say anything. It was like my tongue was tied.” He coughs, still feeling that way, though the feeling has lessened. “Every time I’ve experienced those balloons they’ve turned into blood.” 

“Good to know,” Bev says. “I’ll avoid them from here on out.” 

“I would avoid touching anything,” Stan remarks, gaze not on Eddie or Richie or Bev, but the walls, which are leaking blood, or water, or tar. It streams from ceiling to floor, puddling where it lands, drip _drop_ drip. “I can’t imagine the last time this place was properly sanitized.” 

Mike chuckles, though it sounds forced. “Probably never.” 

Eddie looks around, the house broken irreparably, weeds sprouting from holes in the floorboards, and air becoming tangier and tangier as the walls continue to cry. His heart races again, moving too fast for him to breathe with it, the area right below his ribs aching, body growing numb. He lets go of Bill’s wrist and bends at the waist, hands on his thighs and face against his knees, trying to work through it, the anxiety and terror surging through his veins. Someone pats his back, massages the skin of his neck, tries to rub soothing circles into his tense spots, but it all feels uncomfortable, making it worse than it already is. 

And then the house starts laughing. 

Giggling.

Big bursts of it shake the ground beneath his feet and rattle up the stairs, where he remembers going, following the sound of a girl’s voice. The hallway had been primed with a leper. He’d fallen through a hole, broken his arm, almost gotten his face ripped off—

_tasty, tasty, beautiful fear_

He can almost hear his younger self screaming or maybe he’s screaming right now. Maybe he’s always been screaming. Maybe he’s always been here, in this house, because he’s never not known a house that wasn’t like this one. 

The liquid on the wall burns through all it touches, starts making a beeline towards their feet, ready to trap them. Stan says, “We should move. We have to go to the well.” 

Eddie coughs out, “Kitchen.”

He knows, without looking, that the room in question is a few feet to the left, that once they get through it, the room expands and what looks like a closet is actually a rickety staircase that leads down to the bowels of the house. They can go even farther down still, where it is dirty and dank and sightless, where Eddie now realizes he’d spent time in his dreams, listening to the dripping runoff of the sewer, the scuttling of spiders. Calling out for someone to hear him, to save him, to get nothing in return, just the same laughter he’s hearing now.

Somebody grabs him like a sack of flour, lifting him over their shoulder, and Eddie feels lighter this close to somebody. Power in numbers, he recalls vaguely, and he wonders what would’ve happened had he not let go of Bill. Had Richie not gone to clean up Bev. The photo had his and Stan’s faces etched out, their lives erased, and if what he believes is true is _actually_ true, It and the house and whatever else It comes up with will do anything and everything to make sure that comes to pass. 

Eddie was made for destruction.

Stan has seen every timeline this world and the next have to offer.

Apart, they are not threats, but together, the two of them, are It’s biggest opponents, and with their friends, tied together with the magic used to find him and the love that makes a family, they are unstoppable. Unbeatable. 

When he is placed back on the kitchen floor, he feels like he can breathe again, and he can. Eddie gasps, deep and painful, filling his lungs as quickly as he can, his hands clawing at his chest as if to scratch his way to more air. Around him, it’s lighter, freer; this room has windows—had, really, as the glass has long been broken—and lets in unfiltered light. It is easier to exist here, where there is proof the real world exists, rather than in the other room, dark and twisted, with paths leading nowhere. 

Palms clutch his cheeks, fingers digging into his scalp above his ears. “Eddie,” he hears, “Eddie. Eds, are you okay? Do you need… remember what we used to do. In, two, three, out, two, three. In… out… yeah, just like that. Keep going.” 

Eddie’s hands drop to his side, then lift again, holding Richie’s— _because it’s Richie, it’s always Richie, it’ll never not be Richie—_ wrists. He blinks into his eyes, dark and wide, following his lead. His heart slows back to normalcy, and his body stops trembling, though his arm has never hurt more in his life, not even any of the three times he’d had it reset. 

Richie’s mouth twitches. He presses his forehead to Eddie’s, bulky glasses digging into his face. His nose is cold against Eddie, who feels nothing but an unbearable heat. “You okay?” 

“Yeah,” he whispers. 

“What got you? Maybe we can get to the bottom of it like Bev’s.”

“I just,” Eddie says, “I just remembered being here the last time, and the next thing I knew I was having an asthma—“

“—panic attack,” Richie corrects. “You’ve never had asthma.” 

Eddie takes one last deep breath, grounding himself, and nods, jostling Richie’s glasses. “Yeah. It’s all a bunch of bullshit. It’s always been a bunch of bullshit.”

“Unfortunately that’s true,” Richie says, “but it’ll be over soon.” 

Eddie shakes his head, nausea creeping up the back of his throat like a chill. He feels awful, feels sick, feels like he’s half in his body and half out when he says, “No, it won’t.” It doesn’t even sound like his voice; it’s like he’s a puppet for someone else, his mouth moving and their words coming out, but there’s no one else but him now. 

Just him, this house, and the magic that courses through him, the destruction that he is. 

“It won’t?” Richie repeats.

Eddie hears the cautious step forward of one of his friends. Knows it’s Bill, one hand slowly heading towards his pocket, where he’s storing Bowers’ knife, even though he’s staring at Richie. 

“No,” Eddie says miserably. “Stan’s not here.” 

Richie drops Eddie’s face immediately, tearing his worried gaze from his, eyes darting around the room. He’s doing a headcount, searching for his best friend, and Eddie curls his hands into fists, digs his nails into his skin. Tries to break through, draw blood. Feel anything other than he does now, like he’s going to vomit all over his shoes, like somehow this is his fault. 

He reaches out to grab Richie’s elbow when he hears his sharp intake of breath, the fear rattling his lungs. He can practically taste it, both bitter and sweet, and that feeling seems to bring life to this room, making it nothing more than a caricature of what it is, like they’re all standing in a part of a haunted house at a carnival. The proportions don’t match. It’s unsettling. 

“Where’s Stan?” Richie demands, voice cracking. “Where’s Stan? Wasn’t he—Ben, wasn’t he just—“ 

“He was just right behind me,” Ben says. 

“Where is he now?” Richie all but shouts. “Weren’t you the one who said we should be more diligent in protecting him and Eddie because they’re our only way out? Why’d you let him go _behind you?”_

“Bev was behind _him,_ it’s not like he was _last,_ and—“ Ben pauses, spinning in a full circle. “Bev’s not here either.” 

Eddie does his own count now. One, two, three, four. Richie, Ben, Bill, Mike. Five. Himself. Six? Seven? Stan. Bev. 

“If they were right next to you, they should be on the other side of the door,” Richie says, “so just open it and let them in or move out of the way or—I don’t know, Ben, just let them in!” 

Ben swallows, his hand jiggling the knob of the door beside him, tugging harder and harder. It doesn’t move. Doesn’t even budge. Eddie hears the lock clicking with each desperate attempt. Even with the combined efforts of Ben, Mike, and Bill—Richie can’t move from his spot and Eddie already knows the terrible truth of it—the door remains sealed shut. 

“I can’t,” Ben wails, “it’s locked, and it won’t… It won’t…” He slams his foot on the door over and over, kicking as hard as he possibly can, before giving in and slamming his fists against it instead. “Bev!” he shouts. “Bev! _Stan!_ Can you hear me? Bev! Stan!” 

The silence that follows is deafening. 

Ben keeps trying to wrestle the door open, ramming it with his shoulder now, using all of his body weight like the pro wrestler Richie nicknamed him after, but Mike and Bill wander away, knowing a lost cause when they see one. Bill especially knows what it’s like in here, how they couldn’t open doors no matter how hard they tried when It didn’t want them to. They’re on It’s turf now. The usual rules made no sense. 

Richie clamors to hold Eddie’s hand, clammy and shaky, his gaze trained on Ben, as he asks, “What do we do now, then?” He squeezes Eddie tight, like breaking his fingers will be proof enough that he’s here, next to him, and not lost somewhere in this house like Stan and Bev.

“Go on,” Bill suggests. “Go down. Ruh-ruh-remember what Stan told us. Everything has a lllllllll-layer. Everything can be made sm-sm-small.” He breathes in, deep and annoyed, biting around that last word. “I hate this fucking stutter. How did a say a single fucking thing before I wished it away?” 

Richie says, “You didn’t,” automatic like most of his jokes are. The worst part about this one is how dead his voice sounds. How he doesn’t even try to be funny. 

Bill shoots him a look anyway, half-hearted at best, and says, “Eddie, you know where to go?” 

“Yeah,” Eddie replies. 

“He always knows where to go,” Richie says. “He’ll get us to the den of the beast faster and more efficiently than even the most experienced wilderness navigator.” 

Mike, very gently, pries Ben from the door, hands him the fallen fire poker, and leads him back to the group. 

They hesitate for a moment, all watching the door, waiting for it to burst open now that they’ve all moved away from it, but it remains closed, taunting them. They can’t even hear what’s on the other side. Can’t be sure Bev and Stan aren’t shouting for them, too.

Eventually, when the heat of the kitchen becomes more than a bit too unbearable for Eddie, he says, “Down the stairs, down the well, and through the northern tunnels. It is waiting for us.” 

“Great,” Richie says. “If that fucking clown’s even _touched_ a hair on Stan’s head, I’m ripping its teeth out.” 

“With what?” Mike asks. 

“ _With what?”_ Richie repeats, laughing. “My dad’s a dentist, Mikey. I’ll use my fucking hands.”

7

Stan can’t follow them. 

He wants to, but his legs are frozen in place. 

He grits his teeth and tries to force himself forward. The swoop of falling overcomes him, the sensation as real as if he actually were, even as his body stays still. He can only watch as his friends move away from this main room, Eddie slung over Mike’s shoulder like a potato sack, and try to walk with them, as futile as it is. 

The liquid the house weeps becomes a mass on the floor, slick and wet, and travels towards his feet, burning everything in its path. Now Stan is focused on that, on what he thinks it’ll feel like as it sizzles through his sneakers to his flesh— _to his bone._

One of those giggles grows louder, wilder, until it reverberates through Stan’s head. “We so very rarely get to meet like this, Stan,” It greets through that clown’s voice. “You think I’d just let you come to me easily? You have to work for it.”

So he’s somewhere around here, then, watching them. It can’t have eyes everywhere. Can’t have tricks and traps at its beck and call. 

Stan swivels his head, searching, the brief hints of peculiarity blinding him. In the corners, the house shifts, size shrinking and expanding. By the fireplace, the balloons are just thread. The picture they all looked at is just a slip of paper. The oozing liquid he can’t place, but it can’t be more than an illusion meant to frighten. It can’t be real. It can’t be _acid._

“Am I just a mere jester to you?” Pennywise calls, mocking, able to hear his thoughts. “Am I not more powerful than the average magician? Am I a _joke_ to you?”

“Yes,” says Stan, unclenching his jaw. “A joke. Not real. You mess with my head, but there’s nothing there.”

“I’ll show you nothing there,” Pennywise snarls, and the doors begin go shut behind his friends, to each and every other exit or entrance, to halls and rooms he hasn’t seen. They go slow, like a hand is closing them on their own, and Stan is about to be alone, alone which is not good, which It knows isn’t good, which he does not recall ever _seeing—_

“Stan?” Bev calls, swirling around on her heel. The blood is drying in flakes around her face, sticking her hair to her skin. “Stan, are you c—are you okay?”

His brain insists he say yes, lies on the tip of his tongue, and he almost does it. Almost tells her he’s just looking for anything strange, anything he’s seen in the Deadlights that can help. Almost… until he realizes something else has control of him from the neck up. Pennywise’s laugh sounds in his ear, loud and coquettish; his hair moves with a breath that makes him pause, makes him wonder…

But no. It’s just a trick. All of it is a trick, set up to turn Stan into who It needs him to be in order to defeat them all this time, but that Stan does not exist. That Stan has never existed, not in this timeline, and hopefully not in the next. 

He jerks his head from side to side, sort of jostling the hold It has on him, which gives Bev pause. His jaw unhinges, his teeth clashing together with a painful snap. “No,” he says, forced and uncomfortable, like there is a hand trying to keep his mouth in place. “I… I’m stuck, but Bev, you have to keep going, the doors—”

—slam shut behind her, the click of a lock echoing in the silence. 

Stan doesn’t need to even attempt to try to know they won’t be able to open it. 

Pennywise’s voice floats by. “Is it a trick? Is it real? You exist as I _want_ you to exist, Stanley Uris, never as anything else, and you will _always_ _belong to me.”_

Bev doesn’t spare a glance at the door, her brow furrowing, and leaps forward, hopping over a stream of dark liquid that’s eating at the ground. “I’m not leaving you _alone,”_ she remarks, crossing over to him. 

She takes his hand, her warmth seeping into his body, expelling the cold clutch of otherness holding him in a vice grip, and he can breathe for the first time since they entered this place. He holds her tight, thankful without words, and she squeezes back. 

“We won’t be able to get into the kitchen now,” he tells her. “The door is locked. You shouldn’t have…”

“Don’t tell me what I should or should not have done,” Bev says fiercely. “As if I was going to walk into that room without you. Are you crazy? I’m sure there’s another way to—it’s the well we’re going to, right?”

Stan nods. “Yeah. As far down as we can go.” 

“Okay, well, old houses like this definitely have multiple basement entrances or, like, I don’t know, secret passageways,” Bev surmises. “We’ll get to them shortly and it’ll be like we never even left. I bet you they don’t even notice we’re gone.” 

(On the other side of the kitchen, Ben rams his entire body into the door. It splinters on their end, but the sound is masked. Stan and Bev cannot hear them call.)

“Is that a good thing?” Stan asks. 

“If only to avoid the look that’ll be on Bill’s face when he realizes we were separated,” Bev replies. “He’s really got that injured puppy dog look down pat. Not even Richie can do it as well as him.” 

“It’s really a competition between Bill and Eddie,” Stan admits to her. His hand is sweaty in hers, or hers is sweaty in his, but he refuses to let go, even as his body screams at him to wipe his palm. He feels safer holding her hand, his stomach settling into something calm, giving him the opportunity to think. To hold this mostly meaningless conversation. “They have better faces for it.” 

“Do they?” Bev asks. “Richie’s face is so expressive, though.” 

“Yeah, but you can never trust a single expression on that face,” Stan replies. Whatever else he was going to say is drowned out by a long screech, that of a bewildered and terrified bird, and the yelp that bursts from Bev at the sound. Her nails dig into his skin, but he hardly feels it, more focused on the orange monstrosity that curls its claws around a rotting stairwell. 

Its beady eyes stare them down, yellow and menacing, beak clucking. Stan can see its tongue, gray and slimy, even from this far distance. Colorful pom poms burst from its breast, a rainbow of fluff. 

“What the hell is that?” Bev asks, voice nothing but a breath, almost as if she’s too afraid to ask any louder.

“The thing Mike is afraid of,” Stan answers. “The thing that Bill said followed him, made sure he was still here. This won’t work on me.” He says this last part directly to the bird, making sure to maintain eye contact, even though it makes him feel slimy and uncomfortable. It feels like someone’s poured water down his back or cracked an egg over his head. He does not lift his hand to check. “I know all about birds. This one doesn’t exist. It’s not _real.”_

The thing squawks indignantly, feathers ruffled. Powerful wings send gusts of stale air their way. Bev holds onto Stan tighter as her hair gets sent this way and that; the blood has not completely dried yet, and the pieces of it that get slapped against Stan’s cheek leave their mark, red and wet. 

“That is correct,” Pennywise’s voice comes from the bird’s beak, primed to peck. Stan’s seen that look on so many when he was bird watching with his dad. He knows a bird can inflict damage if it wants and this one is so big he’s not sure if they’ll… _no, don’t finish the thought. Don’t manifest it._ “This bird is not real. You got me, Stan. So _smart._ So _important._ But can you tell me what _is_ real? One is not like the other. The wrong choice may be the end of your friends’ lives.” 

The bird pushes off the railing and soars towards them, mouth opening wider and wider still, teeth it should not have emerging from that awful tongue. Stan pulls Bev close to his chest, her sticky head beneath his chin, and tries to curl himself around her to take the brunt of the pain.

But an outright attack doesn’t come. 

Darkness settles over them as the bird swoops past. Stan hears the whistling of the wind tunnel it creates and the sharp intake of breath from Bev, nose pressed to his neck. He grips her tighter, the bird’s claws raking up her back and through his forearms, stinging something fierce, and he bites down on his tongue so hard he tastes blood to keep himself from screaming. 

They stay like that for—it’s a while, at least. 

When the bird does not return, Stan’s heartbeat eventually slows and Bev’s hands loosen at his waist. His arms ache and his tongue burns, but the rest of him is intact, and from what he can feel of Bev—shoulders, head, neck, back, waistband of her jeans—she’s in one piece, too. He takes a deep breath, opening his eyes, and looks around to find the layout of the house has changed. 

Spinning on his heel, he sees the front door is gone, the space it had been nothing but dark, dirty wallpaper, curling at the edges. The fireplace no longer sits at his left, and the stairs have seemingly disappeared into thin air. Every hallway and door he’d cataloged earlier has vanished, too, leaving Bev and Stan in a box of a room, windowless and exitless, except for what’s in front of them. 

“Not scary at all,” Bev reads, stepping cautiously forward. Her hand reaches back for his, linking their fingers. “Scary. Very scary.” She tilts her head, turning to look at him. “What is this?” 

Stan presses the ruined tip of his tongue to the roof of his mouth, breathes through his clenched teeth. “It’s my test,” he says. 

“Your… test?” Bev parrots back. 

“It knows the Deadlights showed me too much,” Stan explains. “It knows I know how to end things, and that there’s multiverses in which different things happen to us than are happening now. We went over this.” 

Bev nods, running her fingers along the words on each door. They come back wet and black, which she immediately wipes on her pants. “Yeah, I know that,” she replies, “but a test? What does…? Wait. Do you have to _choose_ which door we go through? Obviously we’d pick this one.” She points to the first, letters dripping down the chipped wood. 

“And that’s the most obvious answer,” Stan returns. “Not scary at all? Has to be scary. But if I could just _see…”_ He closes the distance, presses Bev behind him, not sure what’s going to happen when he eases it open, and twists the knob. 

The door swings open with a creak. Bev gets on her tiptoes to look over Stan’s shoulder, but there is only blackness, even as Stan squints to make out shapes and figures. 

“Don’t get too close,” she hisses in his ear when his feet move, which is a valid piece of advice, but if he could just see better, maybe…

He gasps, breath getting caught in his throat, and stumbles, practically falling head first into the doorway. Bev’s tight grip and smart thinking pull him backwards before he can be consumed by that unnatural darkness. Stan falls hard on his knees, but it’s not that pain—and that pain _kills,_ climbing up to his lower back—but the one in his head that renders him useless. 

He tries to hold it, to cover it, to protect it, and he gets three palms instead of two against his forehead, Bev still holding tight to him. The sharp drilling is _inside,_ though, and he can’t get there, even as he tries to dig his free fingers into his ears. He tries to release it, to free it, to _get it the fuck out,_ because he knows what this is. It’s a trick. A trap. A way to confuse him into picking the wrong door, into not being aware of his surroundings enough to save them—

 _Like you could save them,_ he hears, the voice like nails on a chalkboard. _Little Stanley Uris, afraid of everything and nothing. They picked the wrong savior, relying on you. When have they ever needed you?_

Stan doesn’t know.

Stan doesn’t know.

Stan doesn’t know.

But Bev does. 

“Literally all the time,” she tells him, gripping his face as hard as she can. He tries to look at her, but the pain is so intense he has to clench both his eyes and his jaw shut. “Richie would be nothing without you. _We’d_ be nothing without you. Don’t listen to It. You’re our friend, Stan. One of our best friends. One of my _brothers._ You have to know that. I know it hurts right now and it’s making everything weird, but you need to remember that. We love you. You’re so, so, _so_ important and I’m sorry if you sometimes feel like you aren’t. I have such a hard time trusting men, but I trust you. I trust you so much. I love you so much. Stan, you have to fight it. _It’s lying.”_

_She’s just telling you what you want to hear so she doesn’t get stuck here. You’re not a hero. You’ve never been a hero. You’re the one who needs saving. Remember?_

And the first door brightens. 

“I wouldn’t lie to you, Stan,” Bev reminds him, sharp and fierce. “I’ve never lied to you and I know you’d never lie to me. You’re a good person. You know all the answers and come up with ones when you can’t figure it out. You’re smart. You’re—fuck, Richie would be so much better at this—”

Stan curls his fingers around her wrist. “Don’t sell yourself so short,” he tells her weakly. “But It’s right, isn’t It? I need saving now.”

“Only because you know too much!” Bev insists. “You have all the power here and it’s scared—”

The house seems to scoff, which only strengthens Bev’s resolve. 

“ _It’s scared!”_ she repeats, shouting now. “It’s scared of _you,_ Stan, and last I checked, heroes were the ones the villains were afraid of.” 

In the brightness of the first door, a scene plays out. They don’t pay attention to it, Stan staring hard into Bev’s light eyes and Bev trying with all her might to find the one thing that sticks in that brain of his, until they hear him. 

Him.

_Stan._

His voice wavers between octaves as he shrieks. He’s younger there, maybe thirteen, like they were the last time they were here; he’s got teeth marks around his face, blood dripping from them. 

_“YOU LEFT ME!”_ he cries out, sobs muffling almost every word. _“YOU’RE NOT MY FRIENDS! YOU MADE ME GO INTO NEIBOLT! This is your fault!”_

“That’s not right,” Bev murmurs, staring at him, alone in the darkness, shrieking. 

The voice returns full force: _Not your friends… left you… made you come in when you didn’t want to… didn’t even notice you were missing…_

Stan blinks at himself, crying and shaking, shouting all around him like… like he _isn’t_ alone. Like there are other people there with him, hovering over him. 

“No, look,” Bev says, pointing. “Listen.” Stan follows her finger, which is not directed at him, and sees a shimmer, a shade almost, of something moving. No. _Someone._

_Not your friends…_

_YOU LEFT ME_

_…made you come to Neibolt…_

_THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT_

_...didn’t notice…_

“Shut _up!”_ Bev yells upwards. The intensity of the mocking, of the— _they’re_ _lies, Stan. Lies—_ shakes, then lessens, as if Bev has turned the volume down on the radio. With her voice softer, she says to him, “Don’t listen to that garbage. Listen to _them.”_

The Stan beyond the door plays on a loop, crying out the same insistences, but the more focus his surroundings get, the lighter the scene becomes. With Bev leading the way, Stan is able to see where he is—or where this thirteen year old version of him is—and realizes he’s never been there before. Not in… not when he’s saying they made him come _here,_ to the Neibolt House. That’s a cavern. Some kind of cave. There are rocks everywhere. The last time he was here, he’d been in the yard and then the kitchen, propping Eddie and Richie up as the clown came closer and closer, Bev’s iron stake right through his eye.

The scene brightens, and he can hear his friends, the smaller versions of them. All their voices are so high as they yell different variations of his name. 

But it’s Eddie’s voice that seems to break the spell: the horror, the desperation as he yells, “ _STANLEY!”_ and then comes bolting into view, sliding on his knees like he doesn’t care about the dirt or the rocks or any damage to himself, just… just Stan.

Thirteen year old Stan shakes his head at whatever he says, repeating himself ( _left me, Neibolt house, not my friends, your fault)_ and all Eddie can do is say his name over and over, say _no no no no no,_ and cry. The “not my friends” line keeps hitting Eddie particularly hard, his face twisted in grief, and he tries to clutch Stan close, but his cast is getting in the way.

Wait. 

_Cast?_

Stan is able to block out It’s taunting voice entirely this time, and even though his knees feel broken beyond compare, he crawls closer. Bev follows dutifully, careful to give him space but remain as close as possible, and he looks into the world this door provides, innately curious. 

Eddie is wearing jeans and a red shirt? What the _fuck_ is this horrendous—even _now_ Eddie isn’t wearing something so fucking _bland—_ and why is he focusing on _that,_ when he can only count six of them?

“Where are you?” Stan asks. “You were—we wouldn’t go anywhere without you.” 

“I don’t know,” Bev replies. “Does Eddie’s cast say lover?” 

“Yeah,” Stan answers. “With a big red _V.”_

“That’s not right.” Her hand curls around his shoulder as she moves closer. “That’s not right,” she says again, more excited this time. She shakes him, then apologizes when he hisses. “This one can’t be right, Stan! It’s not the door for us! We never saw Eddie in his cast. We were never… wherever that is. Not the last time we were here. Not when we were that little. We were all together. I was wearing something green.” 

Stan watches the five of them cling to his younger self, most of them as distraught and terrified as he is. They form a circle as if to protect him ( _but from what?)_ and try to convince him he’s wrong, that they are his friends, that they wouldn’t leave him. Richie’s glasses are huge and Eddie’s arm is in a cast. Mike has dried blood on his face and Bill has the cattle gun. 

Bill never had the cattle gun. Even now he doesn’t have it. They weren’t armed last time.

Bev is right: This isn’t their timeline. 

It is a mirage. A look into a different world where they weren’t separated for years, teetering on the brink. A world where Eddie’s in reach, even after his arm breaks, and they come back here. It’s real enough, real in the sense that it exists, but it does not exist for _this_ version of Stanley Uris. 

“Yeah,” he forces out, “you’re right.” He takes another look at himself, terrified and bleeding, surrounded by the people that love him, and wishes he could tell himself that he’s wrong. That he’ll be okay, and his friends will always be there for him, but there’s nothing more he can say than “I’m sorry” as the door reappears, hiding him from view and closing with a click. 

Bev gasps, shaking his shoulder again. “Stan, it’s disappearing.” 

First goes the words, _not scary at all_ washed away as if someone poured water on a chalk design on the sidewalk. The knob is next, then the hinges, and then the door turns smooth, becomes part of the dark wall. 

Stan rubs at his head—the back of it, the front of it, his temples—and stares deeply where the door had been, swallowing around the dryness in his throat. He and Bev sit in silence, It’s commentary nowhere to be found. He snakes his hand around her leg and holds her knee. 

“It must be one of these then,” she decides, but Stan can’t find it in himself to be hopeful over a future that starts with _scary_ or _very scary._

Still, he says, “Open the next one.”

 _If they do not make sense, they are not real,_ he thinks. _They are real to someone else, but not to me. I know my friends and I know what lies ahead._

**_Do you, Stanley?_**

Stan watches Bev open the door with the flick of the wrist and a kick of her leg and thinks viciously, _Yes, actually, and I’d like it if you got out of my head, you stupid fucking clown._

There’s what can only be described as a whimper in the back of his mind, and then the rush of a retreat. The pressure lessens, like water’s been let out from his ear, but he can still hear the retort as clear as day: **_I am the Eater of Worlds._ **

_And I’m Stanley Uris,_ he replies, pushing himself to his feet. The second door glows in front of him, offering him up a new scene. _I’m a know-it-all._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i believe now everyone is remarkably unhinged


	11. the world has somehow shifted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Here’s the _thing,”_ Bowers begins, prowling close. “You’re a _nice_ boy, Hanlon. An _agreeable_ boy. It really makes me mad how easily you avoid conflict, how nothing is ever _your fault_ when it so obviously is! You’ve ruined my life, you and your butt-ugly family, and I gave you chance after chance to leave—“
> 
> _—beating after beating, doesn’t matter how big I am or how strong, I still don’t match up against Henry Bowers and his gang—_
> 
> “—but you stayed and you made life a real hassle for me, but here’s how it’s gonna play out today. You’re on my _turf_ now, so your little games aren’t going to work here. You’re not going to do a thing to defend yourself, you never do—“
> 
> _—no one looks kindly on angry young black boys—_
> 
> “—and that’s where you fail in life. Constantly. Over and over. It’s a dog eat dog world and you’ve carved your place into it as a _lamb,_ Michael Hanlon—”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sure you're all surprised to see that the chapter count went up again. i promise this is the last time. everything is written out but there was too much to put in one chapter so it's been split. we've finally gotten to the parts i originally wanted to write back in january so i hope they're, like, good? that would suck if they weren't.
> 
> warnings for this one: blood, drowning, murder (of a character we don't like), typical IT playing with fears, implied self-harm, regular harm, overall grossness, i may describe things the same way multiple times it's unclear
> 
> there isn't a lot of reddie in this one, that's the next part, but i made sure to give them some cute stuff because obviously. unfortunately i can never write a fic about them that doesn't also incorporate the rest of the losers, so we've got a chapter mainly of stan, bev and mike with features from eddie and richie. next time we'll get ben, bill, and more eddie/richie. i haven't ever gotten into the heads of mike/ben/bill that much so i hope i end up doing them justice

1

Stan knows immediately what’s beyond the second door isn’t real— _can’t_ be real—but it doesn’t stop him from getting absorbed in it just like the first.

These people— _them,_ he assumes—are in a sewer? A tunnel? An open space, gray and wide. Airy, almost. The opposite of what Stan imagines when they face the clown. He doesn’t recognize any of them, but the way they hold themselves… it’s almost easy to determine who is who. They stand huddled together, Bill at the front, their little leader, as always. But as Stan counts them, trying to put names to faces _(Richie’s a redhead and Bev’s hair is long and Eddie is literally, like, four feet tall?)_ he notices someone’s missing.

He notices a theme.

Bill does, too, blonde and too broad shouldered for a preteen. “Who’s missing?”

 _Me,_ Stan thinks. _It’s always me._

The others blurt out Stan’s name, twisting towards the doorway they just came through. It’d be comical if Stan’s gut wasn’t twisting uncomfortably. He’d known, in hindsight, in retrospect, in _whatever_ that he’s always missing, always gone, always dying, dead, but seeing it again, seeing him apart from his friends, it makes him wonder what the point of it all is. Maybe he should just find a way to get Bev out of here and accept his fate.

They don’t move to find him, frozen in confusion—frozen _in general._ The scene shifts, cutting into another like he’s watching a movie, and he sees himself, or the version of himself this world created. His hair is dark, his face is thinner; he’s more classically handsome than he is currently, maybe leaner, too. What does not change about Stan through the universes, the years, the creations, is the look in his eyes. The fear.

He’s cornered by two guys. Bowers and… he’s not sure which one it is, which one of his cronies would matter most to him to be by his side each and every time they live through this. They’re going to kill him. Stan. Bowers and his friend are going down the line of Losers, delusional and thirsty with bloodlust, and Stan is first, just like he was the first to get his face eaten behind door number one. What a morbid game show this is.

He’d be dead, too, by the looks of it, if the pipe beside them didn’t start rattling. Shaking. Thumping and bumping and threatening to blow.

Both Stans jump.

An explosion of light, bright white and chilling in a way that the magics haven’t looked before—familiar to him, even as he’s never seen it—bursts from the opening. It’s tangible and curling, possessive, threading through the air, gaining power from the fear even Stan can feel, tasting it like sugary syrup on his tongue. The light follows it, prods at each of them, and takes—

_“BELCH!”_

Well, that solves that, then.

Belch is consumed by the light, pulled back into that pipe like a marionette on a string. Both Stans and Bowers (and Bev, if 1994-Stan were able to check) watch as he screams, as he is all but devoured whole, disappearing into nothingness. Disappearing forever.

Bowers lets go of Stan, shrieking, and Stan takes that as his cue, racing away before anything else can get him—the lights, the clown, his childhood bully.

He shouts for his friends, flashlight gripped tight in his hand, and skids through tunnel after tunnel, looking back wildly, terrified it’s—he’s—they’re at his heels, closer than he’s ready for. “IT’S COMING!” His voice echoes, full of fear, and he barrels into the others, almost knocking tiny Eddie over.

They grab at him, relieved he’s alive, and he pushes at them, forcing them to move away, the thrumming of energy behind him getting nearer and nearer. This is the moment all seven of them face It head on, here in this space, together, woefully unprepared with only their grit, determination, and what looks like Bev with a slingshot.

Not that he doesn’t trust Bev with a slingshot against this fucking clown—maybe _his_ Bev with a slingshot, not this wannabe girl in the braided pigtails—but _really? Bev with a slingshot?_ That’s their best—

“Okay, I’m sorry,” Bev (his, red headed, fiery, angry, stronger) says loudly, “but who are these people? Is that _Richie?”_

“It’s us,” murmurs Stan, staring at them, holding hands and hiding their faces from the intensity of the _(Deadlights)._ “That’s Richie, yeah.”

“That’s… where did they find them? The fifty-cent rack at the Goodwill?” Bev asks. “Richie looks like an idiot.”

Stan swallows around the lump in his throat. “Guess that part of him never changes,” he jokes.

Bev snorts, though it seems forced, and reaches out for the knob. “Well, that’s not right either,” she says. “I don’t want to show up wherever _that_ is. Did you see what I was wearing?”

 _No,_ Stan thinks. He was focused on literally everything else, but mainly on how he was alone again, at the mercy of Henry Bowers. He lets the door close, hoping these kids manage to make it out of there in one piece, but the thing moves slowly, slower than the last, and Stan gets a brief, horrifying glimpse of the Deadlights shifting into the clown, a friendlier figure than the one Stan knows so personally.

The clown meets his gaze, made up face looking more menacing in its simplicity than Stan ever thought possible, zeroing in on him like he _knows_ he’s there, peeking in from another dimension. It winks at him, wiggling his gloved fingers, as the door clicks shut, disappearing altogether.

Unease coils in Stan’s stomach, wraps around his intestines and squeezing. He feels covered in it, skin slick in fear, in the feeling that something is wrong, that this isn’t _right._

There is only one door left and in Stan’s heart of hearts, he knows that one’s not the right choice either. He doesn’t have to open it to know.

 _Very scary,_ it reads. He thinks it might be.

But Bev is already reaching for it, and he can’t open his mouth to tell her to stop, can’t articulate the emotions warring within him. She says, “Maybe we got it wrong. Maybe they were backwards. This has to be it, right?”

“I don’t want it to be,” Stan blurts, and he doesn’t know why. “Don’t—“

The door is already open and it’s worse than he could’ve possibly imagined.

Bev’s sharp gasp hits Stan straight in the chest. Straight in the _heart._

“Is that—are we—?”

“You are,” Stan says. “I’m… not.”

He’s seen bits and pieces of this future; it’s one they’re trying to veer away from, the one tied to the past behind the first door. He’s not in it. He doesn’t make it, bleeding out in his bathtub.

“It’s the last door,” Bev says hurriedly, digging her nails into his hand. “There’s nothing else to open. How is this the right choice?”

“It’s not,” Stan replies. “I’m not going through this one.”

“But if we don’t—“

“—it was a trick, Bev,” Stan interrupts. “This whole thing—this whole house—is a trick. A _game._ I was never meant to make it out, and because you’re stuck with me…”

_(you aren’t either)_

He cringes, watching Richie fall from a height that no doubt breaks his back, crumbling to a cavern floor, sharp spider legs darting around. Rocks fall like an avalanche; a tremor runs through the place, hitting Stan and Bev where they stand, observing in horrid fascination as their adult selves get their asses _handed_ to them on a fucking silver platter.

“Every twenty-seven years…” Bev whispers.

Eddie hurls himself down a ledge, bandage secured to his cheek much like it was before, when Stan saw him himself _(odd),_ and leans over Richie, their faces so close that when Richie comes to, he blinks in surprise, movements jerky, like he isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do with Eddie… which isn’t right.

Which doesn’t fit.

Eddie says, “I think I killed It!” and before anything else can be said, before anyone can react, one of those claws surges from the massive, twitching body, and spears him through the chest, in the back and out the front. It gives him only a moment to gurgle helplessly, blood pooling from his mouth, before he’s thrown across the cistern.

Bev _screams._ Blood curdling and sharp, the kind of scream horror movies are based on. It echoes around them. Gets in Stan’s ears and threatens to rip them to shreds.

Adult-Richie’s face is covered in blood that is not his own, eyes wild and horrified, skin pale, lips pressed together like he’s going to vomit. He blinks at the place the leg had been, looks left, where Eddie’s body rolled, and right, where he makes eye contact with Stan, and much like before, it’s like Stan is right there with them.

But this time, he’s with Richie.

“Stan?” Richie breathes, tone of voice confusing, to say the least. His terror is aimed at him now, like Stan has done something to him in the past to make him afraid, and he’s—he’s hopeful, almost, like he believes Stan can save the day.

Stan’s throat tightens. His nose tingles, the right nostril threatening to go numb. He meets his best friend’s gaze and nods as surely as he can. Whatever Richie thinks, he can do. He _will_ do. It’s just… he can’t save _this_ day. He can’t save _this_ Richie.

But he can save his own.

It’s his arm that reaches out this time, pulling the door closed. The force of the evil behind it, the fight these adult Losers are facing, tries to keep it open, tries to pull him through, but Stan grits his teeth and _tugs._ With both hands on the knob and Bev’s fingers gripping the belt loops of his jeans, he slams it shut.

Together, they watch in horror as the last door, their last escape, disappears with the distinct pop of a balloon, leaving them in muggy darkness, thick and black. They are unable to see each other, to see their own hands in front of their faces.

Stan still feels Bev at his back, fingers so tight in his jeans he seems to shake with her, and it’s to that presence that he whispers, “I’m sorry, but I wasn’t going to go through that one either.”

Bev gasps. He feels her press her nose to his back, and then the wet warmth of tears staining his shirt. He tries to find her hands to hold them, patting at his thighs, adjusting course until he slips his fingers through hers.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats.

“I knew,” she says. “I knew. You told us. But seeing it… the way you’re constantly attacked and how Eddie was just—Eddie _just…”_

Stan squeezes their clasped hands. “It’s because I was never afraid,” he says. “It wanted me to be, but I didn’t believe in it. I still don’t, but I believe in all the other stuff, so it only makes sense that I’m letting this one part of It affect me… and Eddie… Eddie knows how to destroy It. I think every version of Eddie there ever is knows how and so It has to get rid of him too, if It wants to live. And it does.”

Bev’s voice is soft, but it carries when she whispers, “I know.”

All Stan can say is, “I’m sorry.”

“Stop,” she orders. “There’s nothing for—it’s not your fault. You didn’t do this. There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

“I’m—“ He’s going to say _sorry_ again, but bites it back. It’s not what Bev wants to hear, not what she’ll allow, anyway. “I didn’t mean to get you stuck like this with me. I should’ve thought about you before I made any decisions. I should’ve gone through a door just to get you—“

“— _no,”_ she says fiercely. “You did the right thing, Stan. Not going through any of them… that means they can’t come true, right?”

Stan shrugs. He puts up a good front, but he has no idea what half this shit is, what it means. He’s going off of pure instinct and logic he’s plucking from _movies,_ of all things. He’s thinking about shit like _Back to the Future._ “They are true,” he says. “They’re all real. They’re happening here or later or before, just somewhere else. I think if I had picked one, that would’ve been the future—the timeline—we landed in, but I closed them all, so… if I understand the logistics of it all, we’ve expunged those possibilities from our _current_ path. There are versions of us that will always go through that.”

“That’s so sad,” Bev murmurs. “Is there any… are there versions of us that just get to live?”

“I don’t know,” Stan says. “The lights didn’t give me any friendly options.”

“That’s…” Bev trails off, that thought settling above them like a particularly nasty rain cloud. “So what do we do now?”

He doesn’t have an answer to that, but doesn’t want to not provide her with one. “We look for another way out. It’s just an illusion, right? We’re technically still in the house, still in the foyer. We never left. We just need to find it again.”

The issue with that is _how?_

Stan has no concept of how big a space they’re in, can hardly see, can hardly think, can hardly breathe. The only sounds are Bev’s breathing and the pounding of his own heart in his ears. Both are distracting. Both remind him how little he has to work with, and while normally that is not an issue for him…

There are no doors. There are no windows. He doesn’t have anything but Bev and his own hands. That one fucking riddle everyone gets wrong didn’t prepare him for _this._

They’re helpless, left here for the clown’s own amusement, and it’s all Stan’s fault. The weight of it, of his ineptitude, of their entrapment, settles on him, heavy and tight, gripping him so fiercely he cannot even begin to formulate away out of it. It starts at his throat, squeezing squeezing _squeezing_ until his breath comes out in a whistle. The realization hits him and for a brief moment he is afraid and allowing himself to feel the fear he’s been hiding is relieving.

He’s going to die here. That much is certain, and death is merely a constant in life. He was always _going_ to die, but now he knows it’s here and now, in this disgusting house. No matter what he does, he’s never going to make it past this—past It, past Derry, past forty. This house on Neibolt Street is his past, present, and future. It’s what he is, not a loyal friend, or a kid that’s good at math, or any of the dreams and aspirations he’s been a fool to cultivate over the years. He’s nothing. He’s not even Stanley Uris. He’s just— _this house._

He’s this, this, this.

He’s destined to be here. It’s where he’ll always be. Maybe the best course of action would’ve been not stepping foot in here at all, but he couldn’t leave his friends behind. Not when they needed him.

Maybe it doesn’t matter what he does—comes, doesn’t—he’ll always end up in this situation. It’s where he’s—

 _MEANT TO BE,_ It’s voice sounds, grating in his ears, filling the space up until Stan physically feels trapped by words alone. _I TRIED TO TELL YOU BEFORE, STANLEY. YOU’VE ALWAYS BEEN DEAD. I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU TO REALIZE IT. FOR YOU TO COME HOME. COME HOME TO ME, STANLEY, I’VE MISSED YOU—_

The way Bev yells at It, Stan has never heard anything like it. She breaks through the spell with two words, her favorite to yell at this point. “SHUT UP!” They bounce off the walls, ricochet from floor to ceiling, a brightness to them, a tangibility, that gives way to a layout of the space they’re in.

It is, quite frankly, a box, and, unfortunately, Stan is not a magician.

_BEVERLY MARSH._

“I’m not afraid of you,” she retorts bluntly. Their conversation seems so loud, like it’s happening in his eardrums.

He cannot see her, but he imagines the look on her face, one she’s worn so proudly, so well, for all the time he’s known her. She’s always been a symbol for him—of bravery, of knowing her self-worth, of not giving two shits. He’ll never admit it, but he’d spent his formative years copying her, learning how to let insults that sting, that hurt, that _blister,_ roll right off his back.

(They sent an uncomfortable sixteenth birthday, he can’t remember whose, taking shots in a kitchen, discussing how they never really got over anything, even if it seemed like they did.)

It laughs at her, the sound crawling up Stan’s spine like a phantom spider. It is an itch he cannot scratch. An itch he cannot reach. He feels it in the parts of his body he should not be able to feel anything: His kneecaps, his toes, the tips of his ears.

 _MAYBE NOT,_ It says. _BUT YOU ARE AFRAID OF SOMETHING, AND AS DEAR OLD STANLEY HAS REALIZED, THERE’S NO WAY OUT._

A gurgle rises loud and fast, masking the continuous streams of It’s giggling. It’s like the tub has backed up, everything in the pipes spitting up into one big mess, and the floor is instantly wet. They can’t see what it is, but the smell is enough to go by, metallic and sharp. It floods the place fast, a thin layer already spreading beneath Stan’s shoes.

He kicks his foot out, spreading it, and it sticks to the skin of his ankle, to the material of his socks, the leg of his jeans. The taste fills his mouth, almost like he’s swallowed it, it’s that strong, and he has to check his tongue, his lip, the inside of this cheek to make sure he hasn’t bitten down too hard on anything to draw blood.

He hasn’t. It’s just the room, slowly filling with it.

Bev takes a shuddering breath, dropping one of Stan’s hands, and murmurs, “Shit. I’m sorry.”

Stan laughs and he isn’t sure why. Maybe the fact that their mortality is being thrown right in their faces, speeding at them like a train and they’re on the tracks, has made him go insane. Maybe it’s funny that of all the ways to go, his is still full of blood. “Now you’re apologizing?” he asks. “What for?”

She lets out a little disbelieved breath. “Well, this is _my_ fear,” she says, “and it’s rather messy.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Stan replies, trying to neutralize his voice, to keep her calm; her warble, high and pitchy, gives her away. It only keeps him more aware of their imminent demise. There is no way out, her hard, strong shout at It showed him that, and there is blood all around them, filling the space up like a macabre kiddie pool. It’s hotter than he would have thought—hot and slimy and so fucking _real,_ it’s almost like it’d been siphoned from a body for this particular reason. He does not want to think on what that could possibly mean. If this is the blood of the kids Derry never found, or the blood of his friends, somewhere around here… but _no._ He won’t focus on that, not when he’s trying to _save_ them, so he puts all of his attention on Bev, a body of nervous energy on his right. He realizes then that if he had to have a last moment with anyone—and that person couldn’t be Richie—he’s glad it’s Bev. “Fear is normal—or as normal as it can be for a person who is not us.”

 _God,_ he thinks, mind whirling. There’s so much shit he wants to say to Richie, so much he never thought he’d never have the opportunity to. So much he didn’t realize mattered until he was faced with the unpleasant reality of drowning to death in human blood. Things like _sorry I don’t love like you do,_ and _sorry I act like I hate you,_ and _sorry I’m not the friend you want._

But he can’t say that, not only is there no way to, but even the Richie in his head tells him to fuck off. Of course he’s the friend Richie wants; and he knows he doesn’t hate him; and he doesn’t have to love the way Richie does because he loves the way Stan does. And yet… and yet…

Stan shakes himself out. At least he’s not dying alone. Alone and in a bathtub while his wife waits downstairs.

Bev is here, and they may _(read: will)_ die, but they’re together. It’s a lot less scary that way.

In fact, it’s not even scary at all.

Bev lets out a little sigh. “I just wish I could’ve been afraid of something less gross.” The blood is up to his calves now. “My fear of growing up didn’t _have_ to involve all this, but my dad made me so scared of—“

“—it’s okay that it’s this,” Stan tells her. “There’s nothing wrong with the fears you have or how they manifest, just that they’re being used against you like this.”

“And now you.”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“Don’t… about _you?_ We’re in a _box,_ Stan. It’s _dark._ I can’t even see you. There’s no way out and my stupid fear of, like, menstrual blood is going to get us killed.”

Stan blanches and then wishes he didn’t. “You’re saying this is menstrual blood?”

“Um.” Bev shifts uncomfortably. The liquid squelches beneath her feet. “No? I don’t know actually. Let’s just… not that regular blood makes it better, but—“

“—it’s fine, Bev,” Stan interrupts, searching for her hand in the darkness swirling between them. “Blood is blood. It doesn’t matter where it’s from.”

“It matters when it’s the reason we’re going to die here,” Bev bites back. “It’s my fault.”

“It’s the clown’s fault, Bev,” Stan argues. “Your fears are valid and should not be used against you like this.”

“I _know,_ but… I can’t help but feel like I’ve somehow failed everyone,” Bev admits. She shuffles closer. “We’re stuck here like this, and honestly I’m as prepared as I can ever be for what’s about to happen, but because we’re stuck here, there’s only going to be five of them. They can’t do it as five. It’s not called the _lucky five._ Someone always gets hurt when it’s not seven—you saw! Eddie was as good as _dead,_ Stan, and if I had just gotten you out of here faster, if I had a better grasp on what I’m afraid of… I can’t even turn into anything more manageable. It’s still going to fill this thing up and take us down with it.”

“Bev, is that—is that your face? Sorry.” Stan moves his hand to hold the back of her head, her hair soft against his palm. “Never say any of this is because of you. It’s not. And what you saw… that was different from now. They didn’t have the power and knowledge we have now. There’s no other magics at play in those worlds. They’ll be fine. You have to believe they will be. That’s a magic too.”

She shivers, then closes the distance between them, wrapping her arms around his middle. “I’m trying,” she murmurs, “but it’s hard to when everything seems so _wrong.”_

Stan hates the way she shakes in his embrace, hates how they have begun to stick together, the blood drying on their skin. This is not the Bev he’s come to know through the years; even at her lowest points, he’s never seen, heard, or felt her so defeated. He’s only ever known her as the strong, free-willed, brave girl that stands up to Bowers and to Greta, that jumps into the Barrens without the slightest hesitation. She gives as good as she gets. She laughs with Richie, and reads books with Ben, and dances in the clubhouse, a space always reserved for Eddie, which Stan knows now. She’s always on his side and in his corner—in _all_ their corners: Cheering Mike on at his football games and hanging up sketches of her from Bill that are too realistic for their own good. That’s the version of her he wants to remember. It’s the version of her he’ll hold close once the situation gets out of hand, goes over his head.

He hopes that’s the version the world remembers, too.

And as he thinks of her, and their friends, and all the good times they’ve ever had, the blood rises.

And rises.

And rises.

Against him, Bev’s heart hammers. She takes deep breaths, trying to center herself, which doesn’t seem to work as the blood hits hip level and she fists his sweater, clenched fingers shaking against him.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Stan tries to assure her, even if the blood is one hundred percent real and one hundred percent able to kill them, “isn’t that what Richie said?”

“Yeah.” Bev rests her forehead against his collarbone. “It’s more than just the blood. It’s always been more than that, and it’s evolved into more than just the fear of growing up my father instilled in me. It’s… I’ve been afraid to leave. I want time to stop. I hate this town and all it stands for, but it’s always had you guys. It’s home. _You’re_ home. And when you’ve never had friends before, I was afraid we’d grow up, and we’d leave Derry, and we’d all just forget each other.”

Stan’s mouth twitches. “As if we’d ever forget you,” he says. “I think it’s physically impossible. You turned our lives upside down that summer and not just because of all this. You’re special. You’re one of us. Always have been. I’m not going to leave Maine and forget about the Losers.”

_Not going to leave Maine at all, but._

It’s the truth.

You don’t make friends like these and just _forget_ them, even if that’s what seems to happen over and over. It’s physically impossible. There’s no way a friendship like this—a _family_ like this—splinters the way he’s seen. It’s more than Derry magic; it’s _their_ magic and that should be enough, goddammit.

_(but it’s not)_

_(they couldn’t even remember Eddie when they were miles apart, all because the town willed it)_

_(he wonders—)_

“I feel the same way,” she says. Her voice sounds set, like it normally does when she’s determined to make a point. It’s also a bit faster than usual. He wonders if she can feel the blood sloshing at their waists—higher up on her, since he’s taller. He realizes that’s a stupid thought. “It’s just… am I the only one? I feel it creeping. The closer we get to the rest of our lives, to being who we _want_ to be, the more I feel is slipping. Or maybe that’s wrong. Maybe we’ve been slipping this whole time. It just feels like it’s one or the other: Derry and you guys or this whole new future and I’m—I’m alone.”

If only he could see her right now. If only he had the words she wanted.

He feels uncomfortably stuck, the blood rising higher and faster as if it’s been spurred along by her declaration. It’s like a confirmation, proof that she’s right, but it’s worse now. They’re not allowed to keep each other and grow up. They’re not allowed to grow up _period._

But how do you say that to someone whose number one fear is just that? _Growing up?_

As it turns out, he doesn’t have to worry about it.

It’s at his chest, his neck, his chin, then in his mouth all in the blink of an eye. It doesn’t give them enough time to prepare, to take in that last lungful of breath.

Stan goes under. It’s murky, thick and hot and somehow so wet, like he’s submerged in a swamp. He reminds himself not to breathe. Not to try.

Bev scrambles against him, the urgency in her movements nothing against the pressure of the blood. She clings to his front, then pushing herself up, hands on his shoulders, legs kicking wildly. He tries to help, but their skin is too slimy and he can’t find any purchase, dropping her as quickly as he lifts her.

There’s nothing they can do.

There was never anything they could do.

Bev’s body convulses, just the tiniest bit. Her hand closes like a vice grip on his wrist and he maneuvers their fingers so they can hold hands properly. It’s the least he can do. It’s the most comforting thing he can do—for the both of them.

It doesn’t stop the way his throat closes, though, or how his heart hammers against his rib cage, or how his chest tightens, lungs dying for a breath he won’t allow himself to take.

Bev fidgets again. He squeezes her hand hard. She cannot listen to her body. It’ll only make it worse.

This is a combination of both their fears: Lack of answers and growing up tied up with a pretty bow—with the added bonus of _drowning._

He hates it. He hates himself and his inability to make the correct choice, even as he knows there was no correct choice, just a bunch of smoke and mirrors. He should’ve just picked one of the doors. He should’ve looked at them all before banishing them, if that was even a possibility. He should’ve embraced his death, picked a door—literally _any_ door—and saved everyone else. Maybe that’s all he’s good for. Maybe he dies so everyone else can live.

He obviously does or knows or _is_ something, otherwise he wouldn’t be slowly drowning.

_(he wonders—)_

No. No wondering. No wallowing. No accepting.

What is this? A room, initially. They’d gotten in here somehow and were able to leave one of three ways. But those three ways were not how they got here. They showed up. All seven of them entered from behind him, but that way is definitely out; it’s the ultimate escape and It will have blocked it off regardless. Bev came in through the kitchen, which is on his—

Left. _It was on his left!_

He doesn’t know how he does it, but he lifts Bev, unsure where his touch even ends up, and sort of throws her over his shoulder? Lifts her just a bit? He can’t tell, but the density of the liquid makes it so he can hold her easily and she doesn’t question him. She merely loops her arms around his neck.

Stan moves as fast as the blood allows him, which goes quick in his mind (probably the lack of air; how he’s still standing, still functioning is beyond him) but slow in practice. He doesn’t bother to think about how a mind works without oxygen on the off chance he focuses too hard on it and makes it a reality.

He puts all thought on this door. On the kitchen. On an alternative way of escaping.

The knob appears, golden and bright, just as he hits the wall. He grabs it, hand slipping, and turns it as quickly as he can.

It moves effortlessly. The click of the door opening is the only sound in the room, and then the rushing of blood as it takes them out like a wave, flooding the—

Stan hits the wall hard, side of his head bouncing off it like a ball, and before he passes out, he takes note of two things:

One: Bev is right next to him. He thinks her chest is rising and falling normally.

Two: They're back in the foyer. Somehow everything looks better covered in blood.

2

It gets darker the farther they go—darker, danker, and harder to escape. Behind them, the kitchen door is but a pinhole of yellow, more of a mirage if anything. Ahead, their flashlights hardly illuminate the stairs, the tunnels, and whatever else is waiting for them.

Mike trains his on the person in front of him, following their back, not bothering to look away. The curdling in his belly makes me think if he does, he’ll never see that back again.

It’s Bill’s. Mike memorizes each fluff of material—fake fur?—at the collar of his denim jacket. Remembers to breathe slow and steady like his grandpa taught him, easing through the pig pens, nasty smells coming up when he has to clean up horse stalls and cow manure. Still, the smell travels so far down his throat he feels as if he tastes it. As if he _ate_ it.

He’s been around death before. Death and birth, beginnings and endings, and nothing, _nothing,_ has ever tasted like this. It’s bitter and sweet, rancid like rotten milk and sugary like ice cream, with undertones of blood and feces and just like a hint of—

He sounds like a _baker._ A _chef._ Like he’s sampling cupcakes or perfecting a recipe, not marching down to cage battle in the Derry _sewers._

But it has to be this confusing, doesn’t it? It has to find a way to lure the kids in and get them to stay if their fears aren’t enough. It’s just grotesque enough to be worrisome, but then there’s the bakery smells, or the carnival smells, or the scent of things that make you happy. That make you excited. Next thing you know you’re headed into a tunnel, grey water sloshing at your shoes—and you didn’t wear the right shoes—and about to climb down a well, all because of a contradicting siren call. Logically Mike knows this is not a good idea; that must be the good magic’s attempt to thwart It, the signs and smells that urge his feet backward, but it’s not strong enough down here. The turtle can’t help them this close to It’s lair, and so the enticement wraps around his brain and pulls the fear away, turns it into something new. Something fun.

For a moment, Mike forgets why he’s here. He hears his parents calling out to him, telling him they miss him, and wants to find them, wants to stay.

Then Ben trips, which makes Bill stumble, and Mike walks right into that denim jacket.

Eddie and Richie continue on, unaware.

“Wuh-wuh- _wait!”_ Bill yells. Mike has the insane urge to tell him to be quiet but realizes it doesn’t matter. It knows they’re here. It isn’t like this is a surprise attack.

Richie pauses. Mike can tell because his form is taller. Eddie keeps going, almost as if he hasn’t heard them.

Richie curses and leaps forward, grabbing Eddie by the elbow and tugging him back. He keeps a tight hold on him, arms looped together, and Mike makes note of but does not mention the peakiness in Eddie’s face. His eyes are glassy, unseeing almost; he only comes to when Richie so carefully touches the apple of his cheek.

_Odd._

“Are you okay, Ben?” Eddie asks.

“Fine,” Ben replies, “I just tripped over—oh, uh, it’s just—“

A bloated, gray limb. An arm? A leg. All Mike can see is the decaying flesh where the bone had been cracked in half. It looks like it’s been here for a while, looks like bugs are crawling all over it.

Mike gags, stepping back, pressing his nose to his elbow. He no longer wants to be here. He’ll be stuck if he stays.

Richie laughs. The sound of it echoes, bouncing off the walls, tinny and making Mike itchy. “Man, I’m sick of stumbling upon parts of Betty Ripsom. Anyone else?”

“Richie,” Bill hisses. “You don’t know it’s her.”

“Sorry. Sally, then.”

“Richie.”

“Ed Corcoran?”

_“Richie.”_

“What?” he demands. “It’s a kid’s arm, we know that.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, “but now isn’t the time to speculate on whose it is. We have things to do.”

Mike swallows. “He’s right. We should keep going.” He wipes a hand over his face. “We’ll only see more of this. I think it’s meant to keep us frightened—“

“—kind of working,” Ben mutters. “Am I slimy? I feel slimy?”

“No, there’s just…” Bill clenches his jaw tight and surges forward, pressing his fingertips to various parts of Ben’s arm. It’s over the top and outrageous but Mike is convinced he can see the bodies of the maggots or the—the—whatever bugs are crawling all over that or over them or over this place drop to the ground, dead at their feet.

He takes a deep breath, expunging the thought and the subsequent uneasiness it provides, imagination running wild in the dark, and says, “Don’t. Pretend it’s not real. For all we know it’s a mirage. Betty died—“

“—we don’t know it’s Betty—“

“—for the purpose of this thought process, we’ll use her as an example. She died years ago. Anything we see of her, _if_ we see anything, won’t look like _that.”_

Eddie holds his hands out for Ben to take. Richie kicks at the thing, trying to see what it is, and Bill purses his lips, looking pensive as he does this, trying to get a better look.

Mike aims his flashlight at it, which seems to make it worse, exemplifying the decay. There seems to be a bracelet on it, and that wouldn’t have stood the test of time down here, shining as it is. Buffed to perfection. It’d be as dull as the rest of this tunnel is. Cracked. Destroyed. Disintegrated, probably, but Mike doesn’t know that much about gold or other bracelet-making materials. He does know that this is a test. A trick.

Are they strong enough to move past this?

Do they have the stomach for it?

Can they fight the pull of evil, twisting seductively around them?

Mike looks to Eddie, focused on Ben, his skin still gleaming with a sheen of sweat. His pupils are shot, smaller than ever _(and shouldn’t they be bigger in the dark?)._ His shoulders are tense. If he were a dog, Mike has no doubt that his ears would be pricked in the other direction. He wants to _go._

But go to what? Where? And what will he do there? Why is it only Richie’s touch that can bring him back to some semblance of normalcy?

Mike blinks, head swirling, aching, and glances back at the limb.

It’s a stick—a gnarled, thick stick, snapped in half.

It was never a body part at all.

“We have to go,” Mike says. They don’t see it. They see an arm they decided belongs to Betty. But it’s a stick. A twig. A branch. It’s—

_SO SMART, MICHAEL HANLON. SO WISE. I WONDER WHAT THEY WILL BE ABLE TO DO WITHOUT YOU._

He twists his head so fast his neck cracks. There’s nothing but darkness behind him, though he swears—he really, truly does—that there’s hot breath beating down his neck, beneath the collar of his coat. He holds his cattle gun a little tighter, a little closer.

_THAT WON’T WORK AGAINST ME._

Mike squints, eyes straining in the pitch black. He quiets his breathing, soothes his racing heart, and listens. Fear can be so loud. Animals can sense it. He used to frighten the horses each time he entered the farm.

Still nothing. Just the drip of some unnameable liquid and an eerie, repressing silence.

He’s alone.

There’s nothing there. It’s just his mind playing tricks on him, the fear _(normal, natural)_ creating scenarios, letting It’s weak, little tendrils grip him.

_WEAK?_

_LITTLE?_

_OH, MICHAEL._

_I AM NEITHER OF THOSE THINGS AND YOU KNOW IT. NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY TO CONVINCE YOURSELF, I AM REAL AND I AM STRONG. MUCH STRONGER THAN YOU._

“Think that all you want,” Mike hisses through gritted teeth. His pulse thunders furiously; he has no control over it. “But you’re afraid—of us. Of the seven of us. We’re stronger than you’ll ever be.”

 _SURE._ And it’s such a blasé response Mike’s skin crawls. _IF YOU WERE TOGETHER, BUT THERE ARE ONLY FOUR OF YOU NOW, AND YOU COULD HARDLY BEAT ME WITH SIX._

Four? Six?

Had they lost somebody?

_YOU LOSE SOMEONE EACH TIME YOU DO THIS. THIS TIME, IT IS YOU._

Mike feels a painful pressure in his chest, heart slipping with panic. It is then he realizes the only breath he hears is his own, whistling in his ears. Richie and Bill aren’t looking at a stick and Eddie isn’t helping Ben up. There’s—nothing. Not a sound. Not a friendly face. Not a voice.

Mike can’t even see. At some point _(when? What is time? How long has he been alone? Oh, God, has he always been alone?)_ he dropped his flashlight.

He paws pathetically at the ground, looking for it. It couldn’t have gotten that far. Rolled a few feet ahead probably and he’ll find his friends up ahead, waiting for him, and this all was just something his mind made up…

His hands drop into something wet, something sticky, and it explodes beneath his heavy handed touch. His fingers run along a row of ridges—no, _teeth,_ and a skeletal hand surges up to grip his throat.

 _Michaaaaaael,_ this thing, this body, these dead dead _dead_ pieces, groan. _Michaaaaaael, you should’ve died with us. This world is no place for a beautiful boy like you._

 _Mom?_ he wants to say, her voice just as he remembers it. The word is on the tip of his tongue, but it cages it in, knowing if he frees it, he only gives the magic power. He makes it real. He gets stuck. But he thinks it. He thinks _Mom, Mom, Mom,_ and her almost lets the hand strangle him, thinking of a warm touch a skeleton, a ghost, cannot provide.

With a shriek, Mike bats it away, breaking fingers from the hand, and gets up, tripping over his feet, or his knees, he isn’t sure. He somersaults forward, neck cricking painfully and temple smarting, and forces himself to his feet. The room spins. The darkness spins. He didn’t know it could do that.

 _MICHAEL!_ the voice yells. It’s wrong. All wrong. Angry in all the vowels and sinister in the rest. It’s a one syllable word, but it sounds awful. Resentful. Full of hatred. Wrong, wrong, wrong. _YOU’D DO THAT TO YOUR MOTHER?_

Mike doesn’t answer, afraid to, and runs the only way he knows how: Forward. Deeper into the belly of the beast.

The sound of his mother _(still so wrong yet so perfect)_ wails behind him. He clamps his hands over his ears and ignores it.

Lacking sight and hearing, Mike falls a lot more than he’d like. He scrapes his knees, his thighs, and whacks his shoulder against rocky corners. There are walls _everywhere_ —in front of him, behind him, on either side…

He yells until his throat is hoarse, until he’s worn out his friends’ names, not even sure those _are_ their names—

He trips over his laces, upper body leaning too far forward for him to catch and with his arms circling wildly and his heart in his throat, he almost goes ass over head, but he’s caught instead.

_Oh god oh fuck oh no oh god please no—_

“Hey, dude, you alright?” Richie asks, grabbing hold of him, almost rocking back with the intensity of Mike’s tilt.

Mike takes one look at him, tired eyes and freckled cheeks and dirty, messy hair, and hugs him tight.

Richie lets out a little _oomph,_ a startled breath by his ear, and slowly hugs him back, patting him. “Hey there, Mikey,” he says. “You good? Did—?”

Eddie appears at his side, gaze scanning him for injury. He runs his tongue along the middle of his upper lip, looking more like himself than before, even if there is a little bit of a harried glint to his eye. Richie wriggles away from Mike enough to clamp a hand on Eddie’s shoulder. The weight of it adds pink to his cheeks.

“Hi, Mike,” Eddie says. “We used to hang out a lot together. What did we do?”

“Feed the chickens,” replies Mike, confused. It’s not the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to him, but. Now? Really? “You’d come over early in the mornings on Saturdays and—“

Eddie smiles, big and cheeky. “Welcome back.”

 _“Back?”_ Richie squawks. “What do you… he was behind me the whole…”

Bill, hooking a rope up above a well, Ben holding him still, calls, “Do we ha-have to do that now? Is that a thing?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie says, brows turning down mournfully. Mike isn’t sure what’s going on or why he seems like a caricature of himself, but Eddie seems to nestle into Richie’s side even more. “But Mike wasn’t here before.”

“Yes, he was,” Richie insists. “He was right behind me. He told us when to turn, remember?”

“How could Mike know when to turn when _I’m_ the map?” Eddie asks.

_“The map?”_

“He’s always been unnaturally good at navigating,” Ben replies. “Remember when we got so lost in the Barrens running from—“ He breaks off before he can finish, but the answer is clear: Bowers. They’d been running from Bowers. “Eddie just turned us right back onto Main Street. We went to the arcade.”

“I also asked him if he remembered what my favorite color is—“

“—yellow,” Mike and Richie chorus.

Eddie nods. “You said red. I hate red.”

“Rightfully so,” Richie agrees. “It washes you out.”

“It reminds me of blood, but sure,” Eddie says. “You look good in it, though.”

“Nope, forget that,” Richie says. “I am mentally reorganizing my closet.”

Bill coughs obnoxiously behind them. “We can clear our closets later,” he says. “Can we go back to the part where Muh-Muh-Mike _wasn’t_ here before?” He ties the rope with one of those knots Stan taught them ages ago, something from when he was a Boy Scout, and even from this far away Mike can somehow see the minute shaking of his hands.

“Oh. Right,” Richie answers, like he’d forgotten the most important part of this—you know, as _Mike,_ it’s pretty imperative to find out what the fuck that means.

_(though he’s pretty sure he knows. if everything is a trick, he can be too.)_

“You didn’t notice?” Eddie asks, frowning so deeply he pouts, looking from Richie to Bill. “He… his…” He waves a hand around Mike’s face. “Was weird. Wrong.”

“Oh, yes, that,” Richie replies. “Because I know what”—he copies Eddie’s hand motion, adding spirit fingers to boot—“that means.”

Bill hops down from the brick of the well, holding Ben’s shoulder. “I didn’t notice,” he replies.

Richie twists around. “You know what that meant?”

“His aura,” Bill provides. “I didn’t—I couldn’t… I don’t even s-s-see them now. None of them.”

“Maybe It interferes with the magic,” Ben offers. “That’s why you can't see.”

“But _I_ can?” Eddie asks.

Ben’s mouth presses into a thin line. “You’re a little bit different from us now, Eddie,” he says. “A little bit stronger.”

“That makes no sense.” Eddie’s nose wrinkles.

 _Doesn’t it?_ Mike thinks. _Eddie looks half-dead down here. Like Georgie did in the Barrens, before he—_

“Buh-Buh-Buh-Bowers said you had control over the magic,” Bill says. “Even your mom said so. Most control anyone has eh-eh-ever had, even your dad. Doesn’t it make sense?”

“Your dad?”

“Magic possession runs in the family?”

 _“What did you see?”_ Richie demands, shriek breaking through the line of questioning. It could crack ice, the hardness of his voice.

“I saw Mike,” Eddie says. He reaches up to pluck at one of Richie’s curls, twisting it around his finger. “And he was wrong.”

Richie’s eyes flutter shut, the pad of Eddie’s thumb running along his high cheekbone. “How was he wrong?”

“He was black.”

“Hate to break it to you, babe, but he’s always been black. Sorry. Is that insensitive?”

“You are literally stating a fact.”

Eddie huffs. “Not his _skin,”_ he says. “His aura, like Bill said. He’s normally nice. Kind. Yellow. It was black when we were walking. And he didn’t know anything about us.”

“Thought It knew everything.”

“Just the bad,” says Eddie. “Not the good.”

“Or maybe the good, too,” Ben offers, “but only because we associate the good with the bad—or, at least, nitpick it to death.”

“Like how all of our fears can be traced back to things people normally celebrate,” Mike murmurs, more to himself than anyone else, but he sees the others looking at him thoughtfully. “Friendship, loyalty, intelligence, love… We’ve spent most of our lives thinking the worst about ourselves, letting others tell us what was right even if it wasn’t…”

Bill looks dubious. “So It knows everything, then? That’s what you’re saying?”

“Just what we let it,” Mike replies. “It wouldn’t know anything about the chickens, or the things we do together that are just for us. That was smart of you to ask, Eddie.”

Eddie dimples when he smiles at him, face flushed.

“Spagheds, can you manage to keep an eye out on our auras while you’re out saving the world?”

“I’m not _saving—“_ Eddie breaks off, rolling his eyes. “But yes. It wasn’t hard.” He knocks his shoulder into Richie’s. “We’re doing this _together,_ if you haven’t noticed, dipshit.”

“Be careful or your aura will be just as red as your cheeks,” Richie coos, pinching one.

Eddie slaps at him. “Yours is the color of stupid,” he retorts.

“Is it as handsome as me?”

“Mm…” Eddie shuffles back a bit, looking into his face. “As ugly, maybe.”

“Aw, you do love sweet talkin’ me,” Richie replies, shooting forward to kiss his forehead. Eddie dances out of the way, laughing.

_(if Mike knew what happened next, he’d stay in this snapshot forever, the five of them here in this dank, dirty entrance to literal hell, he’d never let them leave. but he doesn’t have the sight. and even then he wouldn’t know how to stop it.)_

“The rope’s not going to hold for long,” Ben interrupts, looking almost put out as he does so.

“I used a fuh-fuh-fisherman’s knot!” Bill insists.

“Sure you did,” Ben replies, cheerful as ever, “but I think we’d better get down sooner rather than later. Not that I’m eager to face this thing, but…”

“He’s right.” And Eddie slips right back into Navigator, the one-dimensional aspect of his personality the magic turned him out to be, on top of something else Mike can’t place. There are two Eddies here, but unlike the issue with him, whatever it was _(and he knows exactly what it was),_ neither of them are evil. Neither of them are _It._ Doesn’t mean they aren’t unsettling. “We’re running out of time. Who’s first?”

“I’ll g-go,” Bill offers, “since I’m the one who got us into this mess.”

“If that’s the only reason, _I_ should go,” Richie argues. “We’re only here because I’m a sad—“

A hand is slapped over his mouth, and it’s not Eddie’s. It’s Ben’s. Pleasantly, their friend goes, “Do you need a self-esteem intervention, Rich?”

Richie licks his palm, but things like that have never bothered Ben. He shakes his head.

“Okay, Bill will go first,” Ben says. “And then you can, since it’s a big deal who caused us the most grief.” He meets Mike’s gaze. “Apparently.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “I’ll go.”

“Nuh-uh,” Richie says, voice muffled around Ben’s fingers. “I want someone to help you… wherever we need to. Someone else needs to be there first.”

“I’m not a _baby,”_ Eddie snaps.

“Never said you were, baby,” Richie replies. “But you have a habit of running off without anyone else and your arm’s a little too black and blue for me to be convinced you can get yourself down there without any major or minor injuries.”

“It’s not—“

“—can’t even see the b-b-b-bottom,” Bill chimes in. “It’s just dark down there. Nothing else. Who knows how long you’d fall for?”

_YOU WOULDN’T._

_YOU’D FLOAT._

Mike grits his teeth and refuses to turn his head. Last time he did that, he’d all but disappeared. That doesn’t stop the hair on the back of his neck from rising to attention or the cold dread from washing down his spine. No one else seems to hear it, or maybe they’re ignoring it, but Eddie— _it’s always Eddie—_ stares blankly, listening almost, eyes like slits.

“Fine,” he says. The sound of _his_ voice sends the itchy remnants of It’s scattering in different directions. Mike blinks, thinks Eddie is shining this golden light, then realizes it’s just Richie’s flashlight, trained on the odd way Eddie’s arm lies beside him.

There’s no room for argument after that. They can all sense the impending doom, which somehow makes them scramble all the more down this tiny well instead of running in the opposite direction. Mike’s heart beats a steady though inconsistent rhythm as he watches his friends go down one by one. He wonders how he managed to go last, but remembers he will always make sure nothing bad happens to his friends, to the Losers.

In another world—in many other worlds, this one included if they don’t get it right—he becomes a lighthouse, staying put in Derry just to usher them back home… essentially for slaughter.

It’s like the farm. He feeds and loves and takes care of all those animals and then one day it’s a cattle gun to the forehead and meat sold at the butcher. Nothing is ever different than what he already knows.

Bill looks utterly terrified as he lowers himself down the rope _he_ tied, but Ben and Richie hold the thing steady, one tight fist acting like a second knot as if the two of them can hold an entire body like that. Mike doesn’t focus on how implausible that is—it’ll come true—and instead watches slowly as each one of his friends disappears past the opening of the well. Where they go he does not know, but he imagines he’ll find out once he’s down there. They pulled Ben into the _(it’s a hole leading to a tunnel,_ Eddie’s voice tells him, but he doesn’t remember him yelling anyone that) and now it is just Mike, a brick well, and darkness in every direction. Bill gave him his flashlight. He flicks it on, going against his better judgment and waving it all over as if the clown or his dead mother or some sort of shadow creature is going to burst into flames once light hits it.

There’s nothing, though the density of the darkness in those corners is questionable. Mike squints at it. Imagines it takes shape. Reminds himself that a shadow can be anything, even to the trained eye, and looks away.

At least he thinks he does.

But he mustn’t. The thing twists and curls like smoke, forming into one horror after the other. Dark flames run along the floor, headed straight to his feet only to shrivel, disintegrate, warp into—a screaming, _shrieking_ face surges right through him. The sound of it reminds him of a time years ago, his parents locked behind a fiery door, telling him to _RUN MICHAEL GO GET AWAY—_

“MIKE!” Eddie shouts. “MIKE, GET—“

_—OUT RUN AS FAR AS YOU CAN GO—_

“—DOWN HERE NOW!”

_—AWAY MICHAEL I WONDER WHAT THEY’LL BE ABLE TO DO WITHOUT YOU—_

“— _MIKE!”_ Eddie screeches. Eddie has always been so loud. It’s kind of annoying how high and insistent his voice can get. Kind of annoying how they’re here because of him, because of Richie, because of Bill. He and Ben and Stan, they never want to be here but the others do and the others and their opinions matter more and that’s ridiculous. He should run go get away get out leave them here wonder what they’ll do without him. “STOP LISTENING! IT’S NOT REAL! IT ISN’T EVEN _HERE!_ IT’S DOWN BELOW! I FEEL IT!”

_NOT REAL? NOT HERE? I DON’T NEED TO BE NEXT TO YOU TO TRAP YOU. I AM ALL POWERFUL. I AM THE EATER OF WORLDS._

A convulsion runs through Mike at the sound of it, of _Eater of Worlds._ He hears, so clearly, almost like he’s saying it now. _It th-th-thinks It’s the Eater of W-worlds or whatever, but it isn’t. It’s just a st-stupid fucking clown and I’m not ah-afraid. Not anymore._

His mouth moves without his brain knowing. To the dark corner, to the house itself, to the clown, wherever it is, he says, “No. You’re not.”

The air hesitates around him, whipping him in the face like a cold, unforgiving frost. It numbs his cheeks, nips at his nose, and threatens to squeeze as his throat.

“MIKE!” That’s not Eddie now. Ben, maybe. “Come on!”

_COME ON, MIKE. GO DOWN THE ROPE. FACE THE ST-STUPID FUCKING CLOWN. YOU’RE NOT AH-AFRAID._

Mike twists on his heel. Is it his own choice? Is he being coerced? He can’t tell. He wants to go to his friends, he does, but he can’t remember if he moved on his own or not. Is he himself? Does he have even an ounce of control in his body?

_HAVE YOU EVER?_

_OR IS YOUR LIFE BEING CONTROLLED_ _FOR YOU?_

“Mike? Mike!”

“ _IGNORE IT!”_

_YOU CAN IGNORE ME BUT CAN YOU IGNORE—_

“— _I TOLD YOU TO GET OUT OF MY TOWN!”_

Mike turns so quickly he trips over his own feet, rocking back on his heels to keep himself upright. Even a near fall and a psychotic voice in his head? in the air? all around? can’t erase the image Henry Bowers makes, dark and tall and menacing on the other side, emerging from a tunnel they did not take.

“Is that—?”

“I’m going back up.”

“You can’t go _back—_ the rope will snap!”

“It won’t if I believe it won’t,” Eddie retorts. “I’m full of—I _am_ the magic. I can keep it there.”

Richie’s voice rises, arguing with him, undoubtedly trying to physically keep him down. Mike hears none of it, eyes trained on Henry and the maniacal way he stands there, making his presence known as loudly as he can in the silence like he’s some sort of _Batman_ villain.

He hears his mother’s voice again. _RUN MICHAEL GO_ and he wonders if she knew more than she let on all those years ago, knew that he was always going to have to run, knew too much and had to go. _RUN MICHAEL GO GET AWAY_ and he forgets their packs, stuffed with things they think are useful in their fight against It, and throws himself towards the lip of the well.

They call his name with rising hysteria, with urgency, and Mike grapples for the rope. It slips between his sweaty, clammy fingers. He drops it each time, unable to hold tight enough, hands shaking with each terrified beat of his heart.

And then it doesn’t matter, even when he gets it, a knee on the edge, ready to throw himself over, _god bless Godspeed please don’t fall._

Bowers grabs him by the scruff of the neck like he’s nothing but an animal—a cat, a dog, a fucking—a _chicken—_ and heaves him back. His nails dig into Mike’s skin, sharp and biting.

The rope tears where it’s hooked up above. Mike hears it. It reverberates through his whole body, settling in the shredded skin beneath Bowers’ nails.

Bowers is not strong enough to do this, but he manages it: He throws Mike back, making him fall onto his shoulder. He laughs, a crazed, wet look in his eye, mouth twitching, face so thin it all but caves in on itself right beneath his cheekbones. Blood drips from his temple, stains his jaw.

“Mike!” they yell for him again. _“MIKE!”_

Henry snarls, lip rising. “WILL YOU _SHUT UP_ FOR ONE GODDAMN MINUTE?” he yells back, high and frenzied and warbling and _angry,_ so angry. “I’ll get to you when I’m done here.”

It’s worded like a promise, lethal and finite. When he’s done with Mike _(murdered, torn apart, limbs pulled from his body and scattered around to be found by kids years from now, following the same magnetic pull as they did)_ he’ll get the rest of them, one by one.

 _Kill them all,_ he’d said. They’d said—Belch, Hockstetter, Criss. _Kill them all._

They all have parts to play. What’s Mike’s?

Mike’s shoulder smarts, pain vibrating down his arm, keeping him from pushing himself back up as quickly as he’d like. He watches Bowers stumble, crashing to his knees. He uses his palms, already scraped and bloodied, to get back up, wobbling. In the yellow of Mike’s abandoned flashlight, the whites of Bowers’ eyes shine.

He pats his pockets, pants ripped and torn, frayed all over. He looks like he’s been through the ringer, but that’s nothing new for Henry Bowers. His hands come up empty; his teeth bare; he shoots a murderous look from Mike _(calls him a name that makes Mike’s insides shrivel up)_ to the well _(calls them even more names, equal in awfulness, that mix with Mike’s horror, that make him angry)._

“Goddamn knife,” he mutters, words slicing. “Fucking _took_ my goddamn knife…” He shakes his head, running a hand down his face, only to emerge from behind it with that same hair-raising grin on his face. He’s lost a tooth but that doesn’t take away from the impact. Henry is still as horrifying as ever, maybe more so; he seems psychotic—more psychotic than usual. Antsy. Twitchy. Like this is his last shot. “No matter,” he says pleasantly. “No matter. I don’t need a _knife_ to kill you, you dirty—“

“—please do not,” Mike interrupts, as calmly as possible. If he gets called that word one more time today he will physically leave his body.

But Henry does, emphasis on the hard _R,_ as all good, reliable racists do, and Mike stares up at the stalactites _(or are they stalagmites?)_ that make no sense being up there, in the basement of a house no matter how neglected and deep down.

“Here’s the _thing,”_ Bowers begins, prowling close. “You’re a _nice_ boy, Hanlon. An _agreeable_ boy. It really makes me mad who easily you avoid conflict, how nothing is ever _your fault_ when it so obviously is! You’ve ruined my life, you and your butt-ugly family, and I gave you chance after chance to leave—“

— _beating after beating, doesn’t matter how big I am or how strong, I still don’t match up against Henry Bowers and his gang—_

“—but you stayed and you made life a real hassle for me, but here’s how it’s gonna play out today. You’re on my _turf_ now, so your little games aren’t going to work here. You’re not going to do a thing to defend yourself, you never do—“

_—no one looks kindly on angry young black boys—_

“—and that’s where you fail in life. Constantly. Over and over. It’s a dog eat dog world and you’ve carved your place into it as a _lamb,_ Michael Hanlon—“

“Eddie!”

“Mike, roll to your _right! Do it now!”_

Mike doesn’t question the order, as crazy as it sounds, and catches just the tail end of Bowers’ kick. It hurts like a motherfucker, like Mike’s been tackled on the football field by boys twice Bowers’ size; he can’t imagine what it would’ve been like if he’d had gotten the whole thing, tip to heel, right into the soft space beneath his ribs. Well, he can. He just doesn’t want to.

Bowers spins around, losing balance again. His coordination is off, his body too much for his center of gravity. He’s covered in dirt, dust, and more bruises than are healthy… or even safe.

He yells, calling Eddie _a magic freak,_ and Mike slowly eases himself up. He’s careful to go slow, to not draw attention even as Bowers is happy to simply lean over the edge of the edge of the well and shout obscenities at the rest. It’d be so easy to…

A rock crumbles from where Mike digs his fingers into the wall. It hits the ground with a distinct, echoing sound. He holds his breath.

Bowers turns.

“Oh,” he says gleefully, “little Mikey is up. I’ll be back for you four in a second.”

Mike curls his fingers around the cattle gun secured at his hip. _No, that’s too final. That’s… that’s murder._

_But isn’t he trying to kill me?_

_Yes, but I’m nothing like him._

Mike _is_ all of those things Bowers said. He’s nice. He’s agreeable. He stays out of trouble and doesn’t get caught if he makes some. He knows how things work around here. That doesn’t make him weak or an easy target. Those are _good_ things. Mike is a _good_ person. What’s so wrong about that?

This time when Bowers comes charging, Mike grits his teeth and grounds himself. It’s easy really. Now that he believes in himself, Henry is nothing more than a scrawny, too-tall string bean of a boy. He all but bounces off him.

Mike’s hands shoot out to steady him; one more blow to the head and Bowers will lose all sense. Their gazes meet. Mike is momentarily frightened by what he sees in Henry’s—dead, dark, _nothing—_ and says, “Stop.”

Something shifts in Bowers’ eyes, the haze breaking, just for a moment. “I can’t,” he blurts, frightened and insane, momentarily in control of his own thoughts. His own words. His own _body._

Then he laughs. The sound pulls from deep in his chest, bringing it up and out almost as if Mike is playing the claw game at the arcade. This laugh is not Bowers’ usual, no matter how shiver-inducing it is. It’s the one that’s become his in the past six months: chilling and sharp.

He speaks. It is his voice but not. “I’m afraid,” his mouth says, “he has no control over what he can and cannot do.”

“Henry,” Mike begins, the name leaving a bitter taste on his tongue, soft and considerate, even as Henry’s hands reach up to wrap around Mike’s neck. Even as he squeezes, grip growing tighter and tighter, Mike tries to… Mike tries to _help_ him. “You don’t have to do this,” he says, bringing his own hands to curl around Henry’s wrists, words coming out between wheezing breaths. He gently tugs at the hands, prying them away.

They stay.

They _squeeze._

“I do,” Henry says. “He won’t let go if I—“ His mouth snaps shut, front teeth forcibly ripping through the meat of his lower lip. It bleeds instantly, staining his chin.

Mike is almost concerned and then he remembers who this is. He applies more strength to his tug, the skin of his throat burning with the effect Bowers applies to clinging on, and says, voice still as low and calm as possible, “I don’t want to hurt you.”

He doesn’t.

Really, he doesn’t.

He twists Bowers’ wrists enough to ache, though. To bruise. He watches him grimace, face twisting. The blood around his mouth spreads.

“And that’s the problem, Hanlon,” Bowers spits—like actually _spits._ His red saliva lands somewhere on Mike’s cheek. “You don’t want to hurt anyone so you let others hurt you. Learn to defend yourself for once or do you _want_ to die a pathetic pussy? You’re _nothing.”_

 _(don’t listen to him Mike he’s wrong don’t let him convince you otherwise,_ Eddie’s voice comes shouting through his brain. _don’t listen don’t listen don’t listen—)_

Mike does not know how _that_ works nor does he want to get into that, so he merely squares his shoulders. “There is power in kindness. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You already said that,” Bowers snaps. “You’re too peabrained to learn how to say anything other than that?”

“It’s true,” Mike says. “I don’t want to hurt you, and you… you don’t have to hurt me. It’s just It’s influence. You can break it. You can move past this. You’re redeemable.”

Bowers’ responding cackle bounces off every surface, filling the space. Closing them in. “And if I don’t want to be redeemed? If this is my destiny? If once I get rid of you I can have everything I’ve ever wanted?”

“You really think that?” Mike asks. “You think that thing is going to give, what, _power?_ Distinction? It’s using you, Henry. Your fears power it and I know you worry you aren’t strong enough, not masculine enough for your father, that’s why you killed—“

“Shut your _mouth_ about my father,” Henry snaps, kneeing at the space between Mike’s legs. Mike jerks back, but Henry misses anyway, hitting him in the thigh.

“The way you shut up about _mine?”_ Mike shoots back.

But Henry hardly hears him, even though Mike is highly justified in his response—and maybe he _wants_ to start a fight with him. His voice has risen in volume, a shriek, almost: “He was a self-righteous, angry drunk who took shit out on me. Life is better without him, just like life will be better without you.”

He hooks his foot around Mike’s ankle and trips him, almost as if he’s been rejuvenated by his speech, by his hatred, and Mike falls _hard_ to the floor.

Eddie yells up at them this time, screaming Mike’s name.

“I’m fi—“ Mike starts to say, scrambling up, but Henry kicks him again, this time hitting his intended target. Mike crumples, pain blossoming near his ribs.

“He’s in _verrrrrrry_ good hands, losers!” Henry shouts. “Wait your turn.”

“Eds, believe the rope will stay intact,” Richie orders. “I’m going back up.”

“Oh, so _you_ can but _I_ can’t?” Eddie demands.

“Yes, now do whatever it is you do to make the golden things happen and let me—“

“—if anyone goes up, it’s _me—“_

“—like hell it’s you, Eddie, I’m not going to sit back and listen to—“

“—but _I_ have to? I have all this power and _you_ think you can go up and fight—“

“—I don’t care what happens to me!” Richie bursts. “I care what happens to you! Don’t you get it? I’d rather tear off my own dick before I lose you again.”

“Well, I hate to break it to you, Rich, but maybe you don’t get—“

Mike coughs loudly. “I’m fine!” he shouts. Just a little banged up and bruised, but fine all the same.

 _“Fine,”_ Henry mocks. “I’m _fine._ Sure, if you believe fine is being exactly where I want you.”

_Exactly where I want you?_

Mike has a foot-shaped bruise in his side. That hardly qualifies as _where Bowers wants him._

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Mike repeats.

“You’ve fucking _said,”_ Bowers hisses, leaping onto Mike’s prone form and digging his knees into Mike’s pelvis. “You only learned six fucking words. Stupid and useless.”

Mike levels him with a glare. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he says again, partly to annoy him but mainly to make a point, “but for my friends, I will.”

He bucks up, dislodging Henry, and kicks with all his might, much like a frightened horse would. Henry is sent back, slamming against the well. It cracks against his weight, sending a bit of brick down the length of it. Where it goes they do not know. They don’t hear it.

Henry stands, ready to fight, that murderous glint in his eye Mike knows so well. Once upon a time he’d been afraid of him, and maybe he’d been a little bit before too, but now… Now it’s hard to believe he’d ever thought this kid could hurt him.

Bowers charges forward, but Mike’s ready for him. He throws his hands out, stopping him, sending him back. Henry trips over his own feet, shoelaces untied and caught on rock, beneath his sneaker. This time when he falls, Henry doesn’t hit just the side of the well, he lands precariously on the lip of it. He lets out a yelp, hands scrambling to keep himself up. His arms seem to strain.

“HANLON! _HELP!”_

“Help,” Mike repeats, amused by his audacity. He doesn’t move, not yet, content to watch Bowers struggle, his feet dangling and kicking as he tries to find a space to put them. There is none. Most of him is in the well.

Mike is nice, and agreeable, and hates conflict, yes, but… Help Henry Bowers?

“Not likely,” Mike replies, and he pushes Henry the rest of the way.

Bowers shrieks, grabbing for Mike, pulling him down with him. His nails once again dig into his neck, tearing skin, and he catches them on the strap of Mike’s cattle gun, tugging and tugging and _tugging—_ and Mike grounds himself, one hand on the lip of the well, the other on the length of rope above.

“I don’t want to—“

“—save it,” Bowers snarls, still menacing despite his fear, “you do.”

Mike half-smiles. “I do.” He bashes his forehead against Henry’s, which has the back of Henry’s head ricocheting off the stone behind him. The jarring of his body has Henry loosening his grip on Mike, but he snags the gun as he goes down, as he loses purchase, and falls, taking the most reliable of the Losers’ weapons with him.

However long the drop, however hard it is, they still do not know. But one thing is for certain, Henry Bowers is no more. A surge of something malevolent rises from the depths of what can only be hell, siphoning back into the place, like it’d temporarily been elsewhere. The air feels slimier, darker, more evil.

Eddie yells, _“HOLY SHIT!”_

And Ben shouts, “MIKE? MIKE!”

“I’m—I’m okay.” Mike pants, peering down the well. “But I busted the rope. I don’t know how to get down.”

“There should be more,” Ben calls up. “I brought whatever I could find in Richie’s basement!”

Mike leaves one hand on the well, holding tight, keeping him here in this moment, unsure of what other horrors could lurk around him, but there’s nothing here. Just his flashlight, flickering on and off, batteries going. The packs they brought, all the planning they did, everything left for him to bring down with him… it’s gone. Disappeared. Almost like it never existed.

“There’s nothing,” he says. “It’s like… like all the preparation we did meant nothing. Like we can’t—“

 _“Duh-duh-don’t finish that sentence!”_ Bill yells. “If you buh-believe in it, whatever it is, it comes true.”

“He’s right,” says Mike, shaking himself free of the fear. It’s fine. He’s fine. This… this’ll work. It has to. “It’s how our fears manifest. It’s how It works. I apologize.” He wipes his sweaty hands on his pants and gives a sharp tug on the rope. It seems secure for now, even though he hears it rip. He says a little prayer, sends a message of belief to that turtle they say is real, and climbs up. He sits, legs dangling over the side. There’s nothing but darkness below, darkness and the shadows of his friends, their heads poking out of the tunnel-hole they’ve found. “I’m coming down,” he says, “but all we have now is the stuff we could carry on our own. Minus the cattle gun. Bowers took that.”

“Mike, maybe you should—“

“—there’s no time to find another way and I’m not leaving you guys,” Mike interrupts them, though he’s not sure what they were going to say. All he knows is there’s a world out there, one Stan saw, where Mike didn’t make it to the final battle, put up in a hospital room by the one person he’d just sent careening down to his death. It feels kind of good, giving Bowers his just desserts like that, not gonna lie.

He holds tight to the rope, tests his weight, and lowers himself down as slowly as he can, bouncing off the side of the well like he’s Harrison Ford in some _Indiana Jones_ movie.

When Ben and Bill grab his legs and tug him into their tunnel, Mike sobs with relief, and when the rope snaps immediately after he’s dragged in, flat on his back, breathing heavily, he starts to believe in that turtle, even if he’s never seen him.

3

Eddie knows when Bowers dies.

He feels it like it’s happening to him, wind whistling in his ears, darkness all around, stomach dropping. It’s an awful way to go, and so long too; it seems to take ages for him to land, and when he does, he’s dead already. There wasn’t enough air to take in, he’d hit his head too many times on the way down—when he hits the bottom, Henry Bowers is nothing but a body. A carcass.

Eddie lets out a little _oomph,_ a little gasp. He’s the only one who hears the bones breaking, the skull cracking, but he’s not the only one who sees the black magic swirl up and away from him, racing off to its master.

It races _through_ Eddie on purpose, tries to rattle him, to see if it can sink its claws into him, but whatever’s coursing through Eddie fights back quickly and efficiently. There’s a burst of bright light, a sizzling sound not uncommon with the cooking of bacon, and the whisper-whine of a breeze zipping through the barren tree branches. It cowers from him, tucks its proverbial tail, and runs from him— _flees_ from him.

Richie goes, “What the fuck was that?” while trying to shove both his arms into his shirt.

“Henry Bowers is dead,” Eddie says. “That was whatever was in him, the part It gave of Itself.”

“Does that mean It’s weaker?” Ben asks, tentatively pressing his hands to Mike’s cheek (bruised) and the shirt over his ribs (stained with dirt and what looks like blood). “Does the magic go back?”

“I don’t know,” says Eddie, who doesn’t. But he does know it hasn’t made it back to the central location (the final location). “But I think we should try to outrun it in case It _is_ weakened by this. It must be.”

He thinks he hears a shout, pained and angry and… frightened. Good. It has to be frightened.

_A little too narrow minded, Eds._

He twists, finding Richie beside him, looking cold and pale and like he wants to burrow into his dumb patterned shirt, and sees that he’s looking straight at him. His eyes are laser-focused on him, scrutinizing him and not in the way he normally does. Not in the way Eddie likes, where he can’t get enough of him. It’s like he can’t place him, like he’s trying to figure out where _Eddie_ is in all of him.

He has not opened his mouth, but Eddie most definitely heard his voice.

“Sorry,” he murmurs, crawling away from him to where Mike’s still catching his breath. Ben wipes at his forehead. Eddie presses his palms to Mike’s face, searching for sign of injury (nothing physical, only emotional, only mental), and asks, “Are you okay, Mikey?”

“Murder wasn’t on my to-do list today,” Mike says, “but yeah. I’m—I’m okay.”

“Yeah, I always hate when I murder a day early,” Richie agrees. “Ruins my whole week.”

“Beep beep?” Bill provides, more of a question than a response.

Mike opens his mouth then closes it. Opens it again. His lips twitch, nose scrunching, and he’s laughing before anyone can do anything else, big bellied laughs that seem to ease some of the horror from the lines around his eyes. “No,” he struggles to say, “no, that was… that was actually pretty funny.”

Richie grins. “Richie: one, It: negative three hundred.”

“That’s pushing it,” Ben says. “Let’s put It at zero. We haven’t even heard It tell a joke.”

“If you think this thing is funnier than me, I’m going to seriously reconsider our friendship, Haystack.”

Ben snorts. “If It can tell me a good joke I’ll let it kill me.”

“Now let’s not go _thuh-that_ far,” Bill says quickly. “Don’t want to put that into the universe.”

“As if It would ever be funny,” Richie mutters. A shrieking in the distance interrupts whatever he was going to say next, wiping the amusement from his face. “But maybe we should go. Beat the magic or whatever. There’s no use hanging out in this uber cool tunnel when Stan and Bev are around here somewhere.”

“You don’t know that they’re—“

“—no, I do,” Richie interrupts. “I’d know if anything happened to Stan. I’d _know.”_

 _He’s fine,_ Eddie wants to say. He isn’t one hundred percent about it, but in the same way he could sense Bowers’ death (before the regurgitation of black magic) he knows there are other bodies here. But given Bowers’ penchant for rounding up Derry’s worst, he isn’t sure if it’s their friends or Criss and Belch—whose mortality Eddie is still iffy about.

Instead he tries to prod at Stan, find him. The magic linked him to Richie, through dreams, music, and his own head _(right? He hadn’t… that hadn’t been… no, it had to have been Richie)_ , it seems, so he tries with Stan. Stan, who had his own magical run in earlier today. If anyone is susceptible, he is…

Or he should be.

_Stan?_

Unbearable silence and then—

_Ugh. Disgusting. Bev?_

That’s enough for him.

Eddie flicks his flashlight down the shadowy tunnel behind them, says, “This way,” and crawls.

It’s easy to navigate, like he was born to be in these passages even though he’s never actually been here. He hears the others file in behind him, the disgusted smack of Ben’s lips when they stumble upon a dark, sticky liquid Eddie doesn’t let his brain focus on. It stains his hands, his knees. Seeps into his pants and dries under his fingernails. It’s itchy; it stings; it makes him want to rip his skin off and start fresh.

He knows what it is. He knows the darkness is keeping it from them, its true form, and he knows there’s no escaping it. No escaping It. No escaping—

— _your destiny—_

—his destiny—

_—you were born for destruction—_

_—_ he was born _of_ destruction _—_

There’s a bright light up ahead. Eddie speeds up, ripping his knuckles and snagging his jeans on protruding rock. The closer he gets the faster this will be over. He’s not excited—

_—he is a little—_

—but he’s ready for this thing to be over. The weight hanging over his head. The strength in his palms. The confusing thoughts in his head. When it’s over, it’ll be quiet. When it’s over, he’ll be—

“Eddie?”

That’s right.

When it’s over, he’ll just be Eddie.

The room, when he enters it, is familiar. Large, clean, and insanely white, Eddie did not imagine It’s lair to be one of _his_ biggest fears. Not that he’s surprised… much. It’s just… _this_ is where It wants to fight? _Here?_ In a hospital room?

The antiseptic fills his nostrils. Makes him gag.

He covers his mouth and his nose with his arm, shoving them both in his elbow, and whirls around to face the others. He wonders what they see, if It picked only him to torment or if It took all of their least favorite locations and turned this into another mind game. Where is he? Where is he _really?_

But they aren’t there. Not Ben, not Bill, not Mike, and most certainly not Richie.

A simple door is shut behind him. Through the rectangular window, he sees a long hallway, brightly lit and bustling with activity. Nurses wheel patients in and out and doctors in long lab coats rush from room to room, a dozen or so lining the walls. Eddie jiggles the knob. Locked.

“Eddie?”

He turns. _Was that not in his head?_

“No.”

He blinks, brows crinkling as he takes in the room around him. A vase of colorful flowers. Two windows, open to let in air, curtains streaming in the wind. A TV playing _The Facts of Life_ softly in the corner.

His eyes flick from familiar thing to familiar thing until they get to the bed itself. A crocheted blanket of various blues. A teddy bear Eddie had won at a carnival. His father, eyes kind behind wire-rimmed glasses.

“Dad?” Eddie steps closer. Steps back. Steps forward. Back. He’s hopping in place. “Is this a trick?”

“No,” Frank Kaspbrak says. He is pale, sickly. Just as Eddie remembers him. “I’m here to help you.”

“Help?” Eddie repeats. “You’re here to _help_ me? Do you know where we are? Do you know that you’re _dead?”_

Frank laughs but it’s not funny. “I know where we are. I know that I’m dead. And I know my turtle wasn’t very forthcoming with information.”

“Your turt…” Eddie’s brief childhood flashes before him: Home before it got overbearing, the treehouse, the colors and lights and pretend plays in the attic. The turtle swimming in a tank in the living room, shell glimmering different colors as the sun shone through the wind chimes in the windows. It would sit on the stone close to the glass and stick its face against Eddie’s grubby fingers. “Your _turtle._ You had a god as a _pet?”_

“I didn’t know he was a god until I died,” Frank says, “though I think god may be pushing it. He sounds more like a fortune cookie.”

Did Eddie hit his head? He must’ve hit his head. He probably slipped and landed face first at the bottom of the well. He’s probably hallucinating from internal bleeding to the brain. “The turtle god sounds like a fortune cookie?”

“He can’t give out too much information, so he likes to be as cryptic as possible,” Frank replies.

“I think that’s just a god thing,” Eddie says. He sounds ridiculous. This _is_ ridiculous. This is… it’s a very impressive way to get Eddie in Its clutches.

Frank pats a space on his bed, one a tinier Eddie would’ve been able to fit in comfortably. “Sit down, moja miłość. We have a lot to catch up on.”

 _Such_ an impressive way to get Eddie in Its clutches.

He walks forward, settling into the offered space. His father smells like kielbasa and mint.

“You sure you’re not a trick?”

“Not entirely,” his father says. “But there’s this to consider.” He flips his arm over and where his veins would run blue, the shining gold of magic flows freely. It matches Eddie’s.

Eddie runs a finger along the vein of his inner elbow, feels it pulsate, feels it react to the magic roaring in Eddie’s ears. His eyes sting.

He meets his father’s gaze, his own blurry with tears he won’t shed, and asks, “Why’d you leave me with her?”

“She wasn’t always like that,” Frank says.

“Dad.”

Frank’s voice is much softer. “I took too much. I couldn’t control it.”

Eddie shivers. “And I can?”

“You can,” his father agrees. “You were made for destruction.”

“That sounds horrible, Dad,” Eddie retorts, voice thick. “That sounds—it’s _bad._ The outcomes—”

Frank runs a shaky, cold hand through Eddie’s hair. The combining magics is enough to have the lights above them flicker, static bursting from the television set. A cool sense of calm washes over Eddie, tingling down to his toes, and he leans into his father’s touch, one he doesn’t remember much of. It’s freezing, like how he imagines death would feel like, and bony, but there’s still that same sense of comfort that comes from interacting with a parent you like who likes you back.

Maybe it is a trick.

Maybe It planted his father here to remind him of what he could lose. Of what _won’t_ be there when the veil is raised.

Maybe this is just to ease him into some false sense of security, to make it so Eddie won’t kill his own father when It proves to be him—

“Not all destruction is bad,” Frank says. Surely that is not something It would say, even if It were impersonating his long-lost father. “The tarot card for Death is unlikely to represent a physical death but rather the end of something. A change. Destruction can be perceived in the same light.”

“But in this place,” Eddie begins, _this seeping, pus-filled sore of a place,_ “how am I able to differentiate between ultimate endings and endings that change?”

Both of Frank’s palms come to cup Eddie’s cheeks, cold and vibrating with the magic contained—magic itching to seep into Eddie’s skin. “You embrace what you must do,” he says. “Fight the pull of magic only makes it stronger. You must follow it. Give into it… but never forget who you are.”

“And if I don’t know?”

Frank smiles, soft and small. “Eddie, you’ve always known who you are, and who you are is good, and right, and perfect. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Eddie shivers, never having heard an adult tell him this before, and says, in a meek, timid sort of voice, “So you know? About… about Richie?”

“If I were alive, I’d owe Went fifty bucks,” Frank replies, and Eddie laughs so hard he cries.

And then, well…

Then he just cries, his past, present, and future swirling together before him, answering questions he didn’t know he had and laying out a particular path he’s not sure he’s strong enough to walk down.

“But, Dad,” he says weakly, feeling all of

_(how old was he when his father died? How old was he when he had to grow up in fear?)_

_(five? Six? Seven?)_

_(it all blends together, all the worlds he’s lived in, lived through)_

feeling very little, needing his father’s guidance, his permission, his _support._ “Can I k—destroy a monster?”

 _Me,_ he wants to ask. _Me, little Eddie Kaspbrak, with the inhaler and the watch with seven alarms and the fanny pack full of medications. Me, who didn’t need them but relied on them anyway because structure was better than somersaulting through life? Me, who always needed my mother?_

“Of course,” Frank replies. “You just have to believe you can.”

Eddie scoffs. “It’s that easy?”

“It always has been,” Frank murmurs. “Remember when you were little and you used to have those terrible nightmares full of monsters?”

 _No._ “Sure.”

“We gave you a nightlight and told you the monsters couldn’t get you when it was on,” Frank says. “Did it work?”

“Yeah,” Eddie replies, but only for so long. The monsters aren’t in his imagination anymore. They’re real. “But kids’ll believe anything.”

“Exactly,” Frank says. “Kids will believe _anything.”_ He smiles, tucking a wayward lock of hair behind Eddie’s ear. His touch tingles. “You’re not too old to stop, so turn that light back on, Eddie.”

Eddie runs his tongue over his lower lip, biting down on it for a second or two. “The monsters are real now, Dad. They’re not in my head.”

“Even when they were in your head, they were real to you,” Frank says. “Doesn’t matter where they are, if you believe in the light, they can’t hurt you.”

“But It will,” Eddie replies, breath shuddering. “The light can only do so much.”

“It will, yes,” Frank agrees, “but you need to open yourself to the possibilities that will provide you. Destruction is not always Death and Death is not always the End. Embrace change, Eddie, and look for ways out. Turn on that light. You may never know where you’ll find it.”

Eddie swallows roughly, seeing his future planned out before him. Each decision, each step, even particular sentences he says. It’s all there in his father’s eyes, in his father’s touch, in the tired quirk of his mouth. “Will you be there?” he asks, and it sounds like _Where will you go, when you’re not here anymore?_

He is five, six, seven. He is losing his father again.

“I’m always there, Eddie,” Frank replies. His hand, as it comes up to cup his cheek again, fades right through Eddie’s face. He feels the chill of it like a cold spot in a haunted house. “Who do you think kept moving all your medications on your mother?”

4

_Eddie?_

_Stan?_

_Where are you?_

_Low._

_We’re up here still, trying to find a way down._

_Make one._

_How far down do we have to go?_

_Doesn’t matter. Think about where you want to go. The house will do the rest._

_Eddie?_

_Stan?_

_I know where to find that light your dad was talking about._

_You could hear that?_

_I hear everything. Even things that aren’t happening right now._

_Stan?_

_Yeah?_

_Will I—_

_Yes._

_You didn’t hear the question._

_Don’t have to. Yes, yes, and yes._

Can brains sigh? His sighs. _Alright. Get down here._

No response. Not even a slight tingle—and here’s the thing, before, when they were talking, it was like a shooting pain ripped through his head from temple to temple. There should be _something_ if Stan is still there.

He prods again. _Stan?_

A shaky breath. The loud, hammering of a heart. _I think I’ve been down here this entire t—_

_**Hi, Eddie.** _

_Stan?_

_**Stan can’t come to the phone right now. Can I take a message?** _

5

There is no reason for Richie to think the Eddie in front of him is anything but. The back, the hair, the bunching of his shoulder muscles, the tiny booty—none of it looks any different than it did in the kitchen, at the Barrens, in his bedroom.

Richie has him _memorized,_ for fuck’s sake. He knows his every nook and cranny, every dip and flex of his body… well, not _every,_ but close. He knows enough that this is Eddie.

_Eddie, Eddie, Eddie._

So he follows him deeper into Neibolt, farther down into the bowels of Derry, where their flashlights do shit and the darkness that surrounds them is somehow alive. Liquid. It’s tendrils, octopus tentacles, leaving slimy discharge all over him.

The flashlight only shows him Eddie in front of him, but Eddie knows his way, so Richie isn’t worried.

Not when they go from crawling to crouching to standing, knee deep in the gray water Eddie hates so much.

Not when Eddie wades into it, waist-high, and doesn’t say a thing about it.

Not when Richie can only hear the drip of water, the sloshing their legs make, and nothing else. Not Ben, not Mike, not Bill.

It’s only when he turns around, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, darkness flapping like bat’s wings. Or maybe those are actual bat wings. Richie wouldn’t be surprised. At least it’s not—

“—maggots?” Eddie finishes for him, like he’s living in his head.

“Um, yeah,” Richie says. “Not a big—“

“I wouldn’t count them out so quickly,” Eddie interrupts, a hard edge to his voice. His words slice. “Look at your hands.”

Richie does.

He _does,_ and his hands… _his hands…_ aren’t even his own. Or they are? These are his hands. They’re connected to his arms, but it’s like he’s high, mind elsewhere, unable to comprehend the concept of body parts. Because these can’t be his hands. They _can’t._

They’re full of gushing wounds, thick and deep. The bone is visible, one for each of his fingers. For his knuckles. Through each gaping hole, tiny white bugs wriggle, burrow, and crawl. There are so many. There are so many. There are so—

“Be careful what you wish for,” Eddie says. Pauses. “No, that’s not right. Be careful what you think. What you say. It doesn’t matter the context. It never has. You forget, Trashmouth; you carved your little desires into that bridge and gave me free access to your mind… and you’ve led my feast straight to me.”

Richie doesn’t look up, even though his hands gross him out. He doesn’t look up. He stares, and stares, and stares, trying to remember what Stan said. _Rip away its layers._

What layers?

These are his hands.

These are maggots.

But… _but…_

His hands aren’t decomposed like this.

_(yet)_

No. They _aren’t._

They transform before his eyes, disgusted and rotted to perfect—well, full and dirty. Normal. His.

He swallows. Cracks his jaw. Refuses to look up, knowing what he’ll see. The perfect form of Eddie, mimicked to a _T,_ with wild eyes and too-pale skin and gross demon vomit covering his mouth and chin.

How can he strip _that_ of its power?

_(he can’t. eddie has always had so much power over him)_

But.

There’s always a but.

“You can’t hurt me,” he snaps. “I’m not afraid of you. This isn’t… you aren’t the Eddie that matters.”

“So if I looked like this I’d mean something to you?”

Richie has a series of little cuts all over his palms.

 _“Look at me,”_ Eddie complains, the pitch and intensity so incomparable that Richie almost, _almost,_ spares him a second glance.

“You aren’t real,” Richie replies in a hiss. “I won’t bother. You can do whatever you want with him and it won’t matter because you’re not the _real Eddie.”_

“Not the real Eddie…” It muses, dropping Its imitation of Eddie’s voice. It was too sickly-sweet to matter, even if Its whine was immaculate. “Hm. _Hm._ Thank you, Richie.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Oh, you’ve done plenty since you made that little Wish,” It retorts, terrible words and terrible tone falling out of Eddie’s perfect mouth. “I’ve seen your heart. I’ve looked into your brain. You’ve given me more than I can ever hope for. It’s a special thing, your desires, and they could come true, if you played my little game.”

Richie scoffs. “I don’t like games.”

Wounded: “Yet you played _Street Fighter_ today without me!”

“Didn’t realize that was your game,” Richie spits.

“Of course it is. I ruined it for you, didn’t I?”

The hot flash of anger rises up Richie’s spine to settle at the nape of his neck. “Whatever. I’m not playing.”

“Not even if it means I let you and Eddie walk free? Just a simple siphoning of power, a transference of Eddie’s stolen magic back to me—”

“—it’s the bridge’s,” Richie cuts in.

 _“All_ magic in this town belongs to me,” It snaps. “I distribute it as I see fit. That bridge is a mockery: A moment of pleasure for a lifetime of pain. A kiss from your beloved who then dies tragically in a car accident. A brother returned to life only to come back to me. Boys allowed to kiss boys until their mothers stumble upon them. A girl gets the attention from a boy she wants but she does not specify what kind and she is crying the bathroom, her best friend at her side, unsure if the police department will believe her if she says the quarterback of the football team took advantage. Read the fine print, Trashmouth: The bridge does not grant wishes. It taints them.”

Richie’s hands shake. He shoves them in his pockets.

 _Not real,_ he thinks. _Not real, not real, not real. The magic of the bridge is well-known. The magic of the clown is not. What are some happy wishes that have come true? Some things that lasted?_

He can’t think of anything. Can’t think of anything but the first couple ever, initials slashed into the wood; their hands clasped; their bodies thrown over. Not even the reason for the magic is rooted in goodness. Nothing in Derry is good, just average. Neutral. Bad bad _bad._

“I know you,” It continues. “I know your fears. What scares you most. What scares you little. What scares you that you won’t even allow yourself to acknowledge, but you will. Oh, you will… It’ll be so fun, but you don’t like to play games anymore.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Richie shouts. His words bounce off the walls, echo loud in his ears.

It tuts. “Always so vulgar. Didn’t your mama teach you to treat your elders with respect?”

“No,” Richie replies. “She taught me to treat people with respect once they’ve earned it.”

“And I haven’t earned your respect?” It asks, using one of Eddie’s fingers to lift his chin. The mouth Richie sees is set into a pout. “Just your fear?”

“That’s true, but you’re afraid of this.” A dizzying reveal of the werewolf, muzzle wet and dark, slabs of flesh between its teeth. It snaps its jaw towards Richie, who, despite the racing of his heart, does not flinch back.

It’s in his head. This is not real. It is a manifestation of something that goes bump in the night. Something that frightened him when he was younger. He is not afraid of it now, not when there’s so much more to be afraid of, not when he’s faced with—

“Faced with what?” the wolf purrs, drawing close. “Take me down that road. Show me.”

“No,” Richie hisses through gritted teeth. “There’s nothing else.”

The nose lifts, wiping slobber and snot and probably blood along Richie’s cheek. It burns, like a slice to the skin, like a blood oath on a hot summer’s day. Its breath is hot, smelling of raw meat, like that first sizzle of beef once the burner lights. “You opened yourself up to me. I’ve seen it all. I’ve seen your demise, Trashmouth. If you won’t take me down that road then allow me…”

His face aches. Screams. Teeth close around his skull, sharp and long, and he is all but swallowed whole, a meal for a monstrous evil he does not even believe in. Richie lets it happen, even as he fights off the urge to scramble against it, to fight. _It’s not real,_ he reminds himself. _It’s not real. It’s not—_

The swallow is loud, audible, when It is done, having eaten Richie whole, and when he blinks, he does not find himself in a stomach or a bottomless pit. He isn’t covered in stomach acid _(can you get covered in stomach acid?),_ fluids, or anything else unsavory. He is in a large, open room, curved stones arranged in a circle in the middle, a throne of sorts—or a cage.

There appears to be no definite way in or out, but the walls are shrouded in darkness, overcome with shadows. A hand whacks him in the face; he goes to snap at whoever hit him to find the owner of that hand simply floating above him. In fact, they’re _all_ floating above him, bodies on bodies on bodies, swirling higher and higher, creating a vortex.

_The dead kids._

His mouth opens as he stares, fingers coming up to fiddle nervously with his glasses. The way they move is so enticing, so interesting… How do they manage it? What is keeping them up there?

_(you’ll float too)_

He spots Sally, a new addition, closer to the bottom. Patrick Hockstetter is there, too, even though Stan killed him, and that little boy that went missing a week ago. Higher, Richie thinks he sees a flash of yellow, a raincoat, bloody and ripped. Georgie? There are _so many._ So many missing kids. From now? From before? From lifetimes Richie has never even lived?

There’s a pull. He wants to stick his arm into the force that rotates them, see what it is. His fingers just breach it, something stings—

_“Richie, run! There’s a tunnel out of here right behind you!”_

He jumps, the shout echoing, and moves in a flurry, looking for the—looking for _Stan,_ who yelled at him. Stan, who is always looking out for him. Stan, who is—

Stan—

The clown is right behind him.

No, the clown is _holding_ him.

It waves its fingers. “Fear one,” it coos, and a shard of glass appears in its white glove. A shard of glass that on further inspection is the same one six out of seven Losers used to bind themselves together one day in August four years ago.

The blade flies through the air in slow motion to Richie’s eyes but in less than three seconds in reality. It slices through both of Stan’s wrists, deep and efficient. Stan lets out a startled gasp, a hiss of pain, and tries to take hold of the wounds with either hand. He can’t. His arms don’t move that way. He stains his shirt instantly.

Richie is frozen where he stands, staring from the blood rushing out of Stan, to It, grinning manically at him, pleased by the expression on Richie’s face. The expression that must match the horror, the nausea, the _disbelief_ filling him from head to toe.

How had he not known this was something he was afraid of? How was Eddie’s death more on his mind than Stan’s?

 _Because,_ he thinks, or his conscience thinks, or some part of him that manages to be fully functioning which seems impossible, given the circumstances, _you never thought Stan would leave you. Not even Death could take him._

But here it is: Stan’s trembling body, his rapidly paling face, the way his mouth opens and closes, how fixated he is on Richie. How he shudders. Stumbles. _Falls_ to his knees, red, red blood all over the place. It’s making such a mess. Oh, Stan is going to hate that, and Richie has no tissues. Eddie has everything in his fanny pack.

A low, hoarse whine escapes Richie’s throat. His heart hurts so bad he feels it in his stomach. He feels it rise, sliding up his throat, beating hard and fast. It settles on his tongue, this pulpy mess of feelings, ready to be vomited up, but for once Richie’s nerves cannot be forcibly removed from his body. He has to stand there and stare, his best friend slowly bleeding out. Nothing can make him feel better, not even throwing up.

He clenches and unclenches his fingers.

He thinks he starts crying.

He doesn’t really know—where he is, who he is, what he is. All he knows is the life draining from Stan’s face.

That insufferable clown fucking giggles. _“Oh!”_ It taunts. Richie doesn’t bother looking over to see Its face. “What was it you said you’d do? _Kill me with your bare hands?”_ It laughs again; the sound bounces off every surface, every rock, every floating fucking body until it finds a home between Richie’s ears. “Doesn’t look like you’re good at cashing in on your threats, big boy, but hey! There’s still time. Fear two’s up next. Eat your popcorn.”

Between Richie’s fingers, as if they were primed for this exact reason, a red-and-white-striped bag appears. It smells buttery, salty, like Richie were sitting in a movie theater. He digs one hand into it, not sure why—maybe shock—and the fistful he pulls out is not fluffy popcorn in the slightest.

It’s teeth.

Human teeth.

A shriek echoes through his cavern, high-pitched and disgusted, and as Richie looks around to see who else is here with him, he realizes that sound is coming from his own mouth.

6

_**One down, one to go.** _

_Get out of my head. Where is Stan?_

_**He’s a little… tied up at the moment. Do you want to see?** _

_No._

_**Shame. Richie is taking it particularly hard, but I always knew he would. He made the mistake of loving people too loud.** _

_Where is he?_

_**I told you: Tied up. You don’t want to see him.** _

_I meant Richie._

_**Oh, he’s here. You’ll see him real soon. Say hi to Daddy for me.** _

_Shut the fuck up. Where are you?_

_**Where I always am. Where you’ve always been meant to stay. You better hurry. Your friends are bound to show up any second now and I can’t be held responsible for what I might do.** _


	12. at last i see the light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s no more magic in Derry. The Neibolt house is gone, the ground ripped up and cleansed to make room for a community garden. No one has seen a turtle, any turtle, since that same day the house went down, and the old carvings on the Kissing Bridge fade with time, nothing left to keep them relevant. 
> 
> All the carvings but one— _R+E_ remains, sharp and golden like it’d been carved yesterday, and that’s where it’ll stay, long after the town forgets who Richie Tozier and Eddie Kaspbrak are.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as a reminder, i have never written ben before, so this is... a trial for that, i guess. every loser needed to face a fear for this to work so here we are. i hope i didn't make him too bland or boring or revolving around bev, i hate when that happens. ben's a dude who uses ':)' and means it wholeheartedly.
> 
> richie's letters didn't fit into this fic at all, but imagine they're like lemony snickett's letters to beatrice. i quoted him in here somewhere. they seem like eddie/richie things, tbh. 
> 
> i'm not sure how i feel about the timing of this all, but it's supposed to be as jarring as it is due to the switching povs, so i hope y'all enjoy! this was a rollercoaster ride to write and i enjoyed myself immensely. i hope you did too!

1

Ben knows It’s tricks. He knows It’ll want to separate them, that It’s scared of them working together, so he ignores the hissing sound in his ear, as irritating as it is. He even goes as far as slapping at the side of his own face as if the repetitive noise is nothing but a pesky fly buzzing too close. But it happens over and over again, his voice repeated soft and sharp, like someone’s trying to get his attention at the library, and like he always does, Ben listens.

He shouldn’t, but it’s so—

 _Ben,_ the voice says, sweet and alluring. _Ben._

His head snaps towards it, losing the trail the others are making, hardly discernible in the dark, just shapes forging furiously ahead. Ben’s own palms and knees are scraped raw. His mouth aches from where he’s held his flashlight between his teeth; he spits it out, pointing it in the direction he hears the voice. He shouldn’t. He knows he shouldn’t.

He should crack his wrist and keep crawling forward like the rest, but it’s stuck in his head now. _Ben. Ben._

_Do you have the homework? I lost the book._

_Hey, it’s, like, thirteen degrees out, why aren’t you wearing gloves? Here are mine._

_What are you doing after school? I want to go thrifting. I saw this shirt that’s kind of shitty but I think I could fix it up. It would look amazing on you!_

_Hey, Ben, can we meet at the ice cream parlor later? There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you—_

—and he’s there. At the ice cream parlor. He doesn’t remember—

_Did this happen? Did she ever say this to him? Did she ever want to go to—yes, she wants to spend time with me. She’s always spending time with me._

And Richie.

And Mike.

And Stan.

And Bill.

_No, she’s here with me right now. She asked me to come here. She has something to tell ME. Of course she wants to be here with me._

Across from him, Bev eats her ice cream in what has to be the most suggestive manner he’s ever seen. He is mesmerized by her tongue and the way it laps up the chocolate melting all over her spoon. In the same breath he’s appalled by how he’s sexualizing her, especially when he’s never done that before— _okay,_ he has on occasion, but he’s never done it so obviously. He’s never once been lying when he’s said he wants nothing more for her to be happy and if being friends with him is all she wants, he’ll take it. He wants that, he wants her in his life, and it doesn’t matter that it’s only platonic on her end. He can fight the urge to kiss her. He’s been doing it for years.

That doesn’t mean this thing that’s going on here, this _There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you,_ isn’t making his insides feel something close to hope. To optimism.

“So,” Ben says. He realizes he doesn’t have any ice cream of his own. Is that weird? He’s just watching her. “You wanted to talk to me about something?”

“Yeah.” Bev sticks her spoon back in the overfilled cup. Chocolate dribbles down the side, puddling around it. Ben hands her a napkin. “I was remembering that poem you wrote me years ago. You never wrote me another one. Why is that?”

Ben blushes furiously, as he always does when someone brings up the poem—

— _as he always does? Ben, no one remembers this poem. No one knows it was you. You let Bev think Bill wrote it this entire time. Gradually she forgot, and they forgot, and no one knows your hair is winter fire, January embers, my heart burns there, too. Ben, are you paying attention to the details? Ben, you love details. Ben—_

—and fumbles for a response. “I didn’t know you wanted more.”

 _I didn’t know it was received well,_ he wants to say, but those words get stuck. _I have so many more poems for you. For our friends. For myself. Do you want to see? Do you want to watch my heart bleed across these pages?_

“Well.” Bev makes this beautiful, terrifying eye contact with him, her mouth curving to show off her perfect teeth. Her cheeks are pink, flushed a little, like she’s nervous. Her skin is dusted lightly with freckles, constellations dotting the pale canvas of her face, spelling out answers to questions Ben is too afraid to ask. “I didn’t.”

His stomach drops. That was not an answer he found in her freckles. “You… okay.”

Ben’s always respected her approach to friendship through honesty and open communication. Even now, with his nerves shredded and his heart somewhere between his ass and his feet, he likes that she can tell him straight up like this. But… “We’re here because you wanted to tell me you don’t want more poems when I haven’t been giving you any?”

“We’re here,” she says, lifting her spoon again to lick at it, “because I want to make it very clear that I would _never_ like a boy like you.” She smiles again like she’s not destroying him bit by bit. “I just want to be honest with you, you know that. It’s really eating me up inside seeing how you look at me. I thought I made it clear how I felt—”

_(she didn’t)_

“—why would I want to be with you when there are boys like _Bill_ out there?”

“I never…” Ben feels clogged again, thoughts whirling, buzzing, unable to form a coherent sentence. He wants the ground to open up and swallow him whole, giving him reprieve from this awful conversation. He wants to escape it, falling six feet down, hidden from her all-knowing eyes and the people around them, staring, staring, _staring,_ enjoying as the beautiful girl knocks the ugly boy down a peg. “I’ve only ever wanted to be your friend, Bev. I love you, but I understand that you don’t love me back romantically, and that is okay. I never wanted to pressure you into anything. I never expected anything. Literally never. You know I wouldn’t, not after hearing all those things everyone says about you.”

“Oh, that I’m a slut, and that I’m easy, and that I beg for it?” Bev asks nonchalantly, like this isn’t something that hurts her. Ben’s seen it, the way her eyes shine and her shoulders tense. How she squares up the second someone she doesn’t hang out with even says her name. “Those are all true, actually, but they would never be true for you.” She reaches a hand out and taps his knuckles. Her touch makes his skin crawl. “I’d never want anyone to think I’d even consider kissing a fat boy like you. I don’t even want to be _friends_ with you. It’s so pathetic the way you follow us all around, thinking we actually care. Thinking that I _willingly_ want to spend my free time with you! If we’d known you’d end up being such a leech, we wouldn’t have become friends with you in the first place—”

— _she’d never say that, Ben, you know that. Ben, this isn’t the Bev you know and love. This is a mockery of who she is, just a mean girl like Greta or Sally, who sit down and tear you to shreds for the fun of it and then come running back when they need help with something. This is not Bev, Ben. It’s not. This is wrong. She’s wrong—_

But is she? _Is_ she wrong?

Ben closes his eyes, trying to fight off the wave of insecurity that follows her words, that lives rent-free in his heart, his body, his mind. He vaguely (so vaguely, so far away) hears Richie’s voice telling him he needs an intervention because his self-esteem is so low. Telling him how great he thinks he is. How great _they_ think he is. But that can’t be true. That can’t be right.

They don’t like him. They can’t. He’s not good enough for their group. He’s the only loser left in it. Richie is funny and Bill is so creative and Stan is the smartest person in the world and Mike is so cool and Bev is hands down the prettiest girl at their school… and Ben is… Ben is…

He’s _this._ And what is this? Too chubby, not outgoing enough, not interesting. Just nice. Ben is _nice,_ and he lets people walk all over him, and he’ll do your homework if you ask! He’ll do all of it!

He’s not enough for a group called the _Losers Club._ He’ll never be enough, even if he tries to be someone he’s not. He’s always going to be that kid who was too afraid to make friends and forced some people he just met to be his, showing them his fucked up serial killer-stalker wall of all the scary shit that happens in their town. _Fuck,_ he’s so pathetic, so starved for friendship, he can’t realize what’s going on right in front of him, can’t see that he’s not wanted.

He made them a clubhouse for crying out loud! He dedicated time and effort to make them a place they could hang out, free to be the versions of themselves they were afraid to show the world and look what happened with that. They utilized it until it held no more value to them—

— _the place was tainted by this town, but it was special. It is special. The memories of it killed Richie and he left it, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t love it, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t the best—_

—just like Ben. They use him and toss him away and there’s no reason for him to think otherwise. No memories to pull out of the bank to prove he _is_ their friend and they _will_ go to bat for him just as he does for them. Bev has spelled it out all so clearly, all so neatly, nice and easy in that blunt way of hers.

_God._

Bev’s tinkling laughter echoes around him. He hears her chair scrape against the floor as she gets up, the little bell above the door as she leaves the ice cream parlor, and the bursts of laughter from everyone around him. They love his humiliation, the other patrons—young or old, it doesn’t matter. It fills him from the toes up, the sounds of their snickers, and it’s all he hears, rising in a crescendo until he physically has to cover his ears to block it out. They laugh at that too.

He presses harder and harder, muffling the noise. He wonders if he can apply enough pressure to pop his head like a balloon. He wonders if it would hurt much. If he would deflate, too, leaving nothing but a body suit behind.

The laughter quiets down.

Disappears.

It’s silent.

Ben peeks one eye open, ready to face the music, to flee, to go home and beg his mom to move again, but he’s not at the ice cream parlor anymore—

— _Ben, that never happened. It will never happen. She asked you to go, yes, but that day she got detention for skipping gym like she always does so she couldn’t go. Ben, that’s not what she wants to say. I know what she wants to say—_

—he’s in the clubhouse. Or the makings of it, at least.

It looks as it did when he first came up with the idea, using the shovel his mom normally uses for snow removal, his shoulders straining and his hands blistering. It took him three weeks to save up enough money to buy a real shovel; now is not that time. The production is still slow-going. He’s essentially just in a hole in the ground, dirt everywhere—in his eyes, his hair, under his nails, in his mouth—and it’s dark. It’s _so_ fucking dark.

Ben remembers this exact moment, crystal clear like it’d happened yesterday when it was several years ago. For the length of time it took a cloud to move past the sun, he’d thought he’d gotten lost, gotten buried in the enormity of his dangerous task. He’d thought Bowers found him and clogged up the hole, that the clown managed to breach the safety of the Barrens and use his fear to kill him, that he was down here and there was no way out… and then the sun shone again and he’d seen the exit.

Now there’s nothing. There is no sun. No hole up above. It’s just Ben, darkness, dirt, earth, and a shovel that’s cracking down the middle.

The earth caves in on him. It fills the mediocre hole he’d dug. Maybe he should’ve gone wide before he went down. Maybe he shouldn’t have attempted this in the first place. He’s not an architect. He has no idea how shit like this works. He’s so—he’s—he’s _stupid._

He’s going to die here. He knows it. He’s going to die in a hole in the fucking ground he dug himself. No one knows he’s here. No one knows to check up on him. Beyond that, no one _will._

Bev is right: They just tolerate him. They don’t invite him anywhere unless he’s already part of the conversation. They don’t call him or ring his doorbell or show up with their bikes, like _hey, we’re going to the Barrens, wanna come?_ He stumbles upon them more often than not, just as he met them that one day in June.

They humor him for as long as they can stomach him and here he thought he was doing something nice, making a lasting memory of their friendship, but he’s just getting in over his head like he always does. _And he’s going to die here._

He is because he never told them, and they don’t like him, and they wouldn’t even bother with him if he did call out—

_“Ben, take my hand!”_

Jumping, Ben looks up wildly, dirt dislodging behind him. He has to be hallucinating, right? That’s what happens when you lose oxygen, when nothing gets to your brain. You see things. You hear things. You imagine your friends are your friends and they’ll come to save you when they haven’t heard from you.

Huh. How long has he been dying? How long has the dirt been swallowing him whole?

 _“Look up!”_ the voice shouts. _“Above you! Take my hand!”_

Ben cranes his head but sees nothing. It’s too dark. There’s no one there. He just wants there to be. But for some reason he lifts his arm, feeling dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt— _fingers._ He hiccups, recognizing them, warm and calloused as they are, and grasps them frantically. They wrap around him, tight and strong. Someone is _here._ Someone wants to save him. Someone _cares._

_(they’ve always cared)_

“I need you to help me, Ben,” the voice says. “I can only pull you out so much. You need to kick out, kind of like you’re swimming. Can you do that for me? Can you help me?”

“I can.” Ben clears his throat, his own voice hoarse. Cracking. “I can try.”

And he does. Fuck, he does.

He feels himself being pulled up and scrambles out. It takes so long even as he wriggles and claws, as dirt packs into his ears, his nostrils. Sticks to his eyelashes. How deep did he dig?

_(six feet down)_

_(you dug your own grave)_

When he finally breaks the surface, literally rising from the dead, Ben gasps. He flops on his back like a fish out of water, taking in painful gulps of air—air that is stale and musty, but still air it is. He is trembling, but unsure of what part of that he found scariest. The confirmation of years’ worth of insecurities? The fact that he was _buried alive?_ Both widen the hole in his heart, which feels broken beyond repair.

“You need to air out whatever you’re keeping buried inside. It’s only hurting you.”

“Mike?” Ben wheezes. He pries his eyes open, searching, and notices they aren’t in the Barrens at all, but the disgusting tunnels beneath Derry. _Right._

That was just a trick… but it felt so real.

Mike crouches down. “Yeah, it’s me.” From the knees down, dirt cakes his jeans. “Are you okay?”

“I… don’t think so.” Ben coughs. “You heard all that?”

“Yeah.” Mike looks sheepish. “I—when you didn’t move, I tried to get you to go, but I guess I went wherever It took you.”

“But it only affected me.”

“I already had my little moment,” Mike admits. “I beat it.”

Ben is still shaking. “How?”

“I remembered,” says Mike. “And, listen, all that shit It said to you? A lie. We love you. We want to spend time with you. You’re our friend. Bev would _never_ say anything like that ever. Not even to someone she hated.”

He flushes. “Great.”

“Hey.” Mike nudges him, offering a hand up. “We all get insecure sometimes, but there’s nothing for you to be insecure about with us. We like you, all the parts of you… some of us more than others.”

“I should tell her it was me,” Ben says, “that wrote the poem.”

“You should,” Mike agrees, “but a part of me thinks she already knows.”

“Great,” Ben repeats, “so she’s known this entire time and—”

“—and I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” Mike interrupts. “But if she does turn out to be like that, _which she won’t,_ I’ll have some words with her. No one hurts your feelings like that and gets away with it. Not on my watch.”

“Thanks, Mike.”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s what friends do.”

“Yeah,” Ben says. “That's what I’m—thanks,” he repeats. “For being my friend.”

Mike smiles, hooking an arm around Ben’s shoulders. “Goes both ways. Thanks for being mine. Let’s go round up the rest of them, ‘cause you got more than one, even if it feels like you’ve got none.”

2

It’s a maze down here, but Bill runs from tunnel to tunnel, kicking up shit as he does. Globs of _something_ stick to the skin of his ankles. He doesn’t want to think much about this stuff, dark and thick, clutching to him like it has a mind of its own. It’s muck, it’s sludge, and it slows him down, hardening around his feet like some kind of fucked up quicksand.

Bill tugs at his foot, both hands wrapped around his knee to tear it out of its encasement. All he gets is the tiniest slide of his leg, which _hurts._ He almost falls forward, which frightens him—who knows what’ll happen to his legs?—but keeps himself upright by sheer willpower.

His foot only breaks free when he hears it: The cries of a baby, the wails of a toddler, the pained shrieks of Georgie when he was six. The way his name is called, over and over— _Billy! Billy! Billy!—_ like he’s been yelling for so long but Bill hasn’t been able to hear.

It breaks his heart. Tears it straight in two, right down the middle, leaving nothing but jagged pieces in its wake.

Bill kicks through the sludge like it’s ice, sending bits flying, and runs in the general direction of the sound. Something niggles at the back of his mind, something telling him to take a breath and _think,_ but Bill can’t stop, not when it’s Georgie, not when he wasn’t there before. He wouldn’t be here, he wouldn’t be scared, had Bill just went outside with him. Had he not been a liar. Had he sucked it up and lost an hour or two to a sailboat contest through the flooded streets of their neighborhood.

And he’d gotten him back! Wished for him, missed him so much, that someone felt bad enough to return him, if only to fill the gaping holes in Bill’s memory.

Bill all but swims through the disgusting rot ahead of him, rising like the sewer is meeting the Barrens, bumping into bones and arms and swollen eyes. This place, these tunnels, _Neibolt Street,_ is every Halloween store’s wet dream and Bill’s personal nightmare. He never knew what Georgie looked like when he died the first time; he never saw the body. But he can imagine it, his brain working overtime with his overactive imagination.

It’s probably something like—

_bloated cheeks horror etched to his face skin pale from blood loss veins purple and prominent but holding nothing of substance a carcass a shell blood blood blood guts_

Death is scary, but death is something he’ll face if it means he’ll get his brother back for good.

_(you’re not supposed to be here, he’ll get you)_

Too bad, so sad. It’s too late to not be got. Bill will _always_ be got when it comes to Georgie. He failed him once. He won’t do it again.

_Even if it’s a trick?_

Even if it’s a trick.

And it _is_ a trick; he’s not fucking stupid. He may have a stutter again, but that’s never stopped him from being smart. He’s just, like, not smart _now._

_(is he ever smart when it comes to his brother? has he ever had one coherent thought in the past four years?)_

_(no)_

There’s a door at the end of this tunnel, but the knob is somewhere beneath the surface of this thick, disgusting water. Bill grapples for the knob and twists; a bone, white and sharp like one he’d seen on the skeleton in biology, floats to the surface like it’s been forcibly removed, _broken_ by Bill’s touch. Like it’s been there this whole time. Like _someone_ has been there, trying to escape, but unable to, like—

He pushes hard, and then harder than necessary, fear gripping tight on his heart. The door opens quick, and with a screech, right into… his bedroom, eclipsed in darkness.

There’s an onslaught of rain hitting his windows, not too much but not too little. The storm will worsen in an hour or two, he knows, and then it will clear, though the sky will remain gray and cloudy. There’s tissue boxes on his nightstand and his mattress. His sketchbook with all of his pencils is concealed by a bundle of blankets. On his desk, his hamster emerges from its nest of tissue paper, squinting blearily at him before drinking from its water bottle. The calendar next to the cage reads _OCTOBER 1988._

His history project on the Civil War lays abandoned, next to the textbook he pretended to read last night. He hears his mother playing the piano downstairs, an eerie tune that climbs up and surrounds him. He never knew where his father was.

Bill, though—Bill knows where _he_ is.

He’s in his pajamas, a sweater and flannel pants. His nose is stuffed, a little runny, but not enough to warrant the theatrics he’ll pull when Georgie comes up about ten minutes from now.

This is the worst day of his life, second only to when he found out his obsession with his brother’s disappearance was all for null.

His hands are shaking while he turns to his bed. He tugs his sketchbook out, running his fingers over the drawings within. He’d been trying something new that day, some sort of darkness clutching at his brain when he’d awoken. The horror kick he’ll never end up escaping from starts on this day in 1988 and he hadn’t even met the clown yet.

_(unless…)_

He’d started a piece that was all about the manifestation of fear and how it appears. How it makes you feel. There are squiggles and swirls and dark, dark shapes that make his stomach twist. A half-finished sketch of a werewolf, the creepy eyes of a spider, a face that looks to be a mummy… things that scared him as a child, too: Oceans and heights and distorted alien heads and—

—a clown. A perfect recreation of the piece of shit that terrorized them. _Terrorizes_ them still.

Had he?

No, he couldn’t have.

It’s not possible.

He hadn’t… no…

The picture shakes. Shudders. _Moves._ The clown is in the background, then the foreground, then curling its fingers around the sides of the paper like he is trying to escape. The face morphs and shifts and sharpens like Bill’s added layers of shading, of detail, those sinister eyes zeroing in on Bill.

“Want to fix this day, Billy? Want to go back in time and save little Georgie’s life?”

Bill grinds his teeth to keep from answering, but the two of them know what he’d say if he did.

_Yes._

_Of course._

_Obviously._

Pennywise leans out of frame and into reality, pressing his nose to Bill’s. He is both frozen and hot, smelling wretched. Bill gags. “What makes you think I wouldn’t take you both?”

“There’s puh-puh-puh-power in n—”

“—nuh-nuh-nuh-numbers?” Pennywise mocks, voice cutting, smile twisting. “Where are your numbers now, Billy? Who’s going to save you from the _Big Bad Wolf?”_

“Me!”

Pennywise is already halfway out of Bill’s sketchbook when Georgie comes running, launching at the mattress, landing hard and snapping a number of Bill’s colored pencils, and stabbing Pennywise right in the ear.

The handle of the knife looks familiar. Bill checks his back pocket.

Bowers’ knife is gone, sticking out of Pennywise’s head.

How…?

_(don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to, Bill, you learned that)_

The clown—no, _It—_ lets out an unearthly shriek.

“I told you not to listen, Bill!” Georgie snaps.

“But—”

Georgie shifts, eyes wide, wearing a turtleneck and overalls. He’s six years old. He’s Bill’s little brother. He’s—

“I’m _gone,_ Billy,” Georgie says softly. “I’ve been gone this whole time, even when I was right in front of you. Please listen to me. You can’t save m—”

“—oh, how he _wishes,”_ Pennywise snarls, gargling on his own, darkened blood. The black of it stains his white face paint, mixes with the red of his mouth. “He wishes. He _wished!_ Say, Billy, you want to wish again? I’ll give you your brother back…”

 _“No!”_ Georgie yells.

Bill hardly hears him, staring at the clown, seeing yet unseeing. Georgie? Back? _Back with him?_ Does that mean he was never really gone?

_(i’ve been gone this whole time)_

Years of time with Georgie… years to grow, years to love… Georgie with him until they’re old and gray, but full of memories they wouldn’t have been able to have otherwise…

Pennywise sees this all play out on his face. The crackle of his voice softens. “All you have to do is give me Eddie. Doesn’t matter how. Wish him away. Hand him over. Kill him yourself… you’ll get your brother back…”

Bill thinks about it, honest to God _thinks_ about it, and the strength of his thought, of his belief, gives Pennywise just enough power to reach up and pull the knife from his ear.

Georgie gasps, surging forward to grab it, but Pennywise’s gloved hand holds tight to his fingers, crushing them. With the other, Pennywise flips the knife with the deft flick of the wrist; over and over it flies into the air.

“Georgie for Eddie?” Bill asks.

Georgie shakes his head.

Pennywise smiles, sharp teeth nicking his lip. “Georgie for Eddie.” The shadows around them shiver in anticipation. “What do you say? A life for a life.”

_I’m gone, Billy! I’ve been gone this whole time!_

Georgie appears in Bill’s mind with purple bruises beneath his eyes every day no matter how long he slept. Georgie, asleep every time he went to check on him, at his best in the dead of night. Georgie, eating the oddest foods, undercooked and raw, and smelling dirty despite his constant baths. Georgie, pale and bloody, his arm hanging oddly at his side, hanging by a thread, teeth marks in his shoulder…

_You can’t save me!_

Please. Please let me.

I’ll do anything.

_Anything?_

Eddie replaces Georgie, fading into existence. At age five, he’d sat intently, calm and content, listening to Bill as if his stutter did not exist. He helped him create characters and monsters for his stories. They recreated scenes that popped into Bill’s head. They ran through their houses, their backyards, and eventually the Barrens, always laughing. Always eager to try new things. Scary things. _You won’t tell my mom, will you, Bill?_ Eddie constantly borrowed shirts to replace stained ones and patched them all up with his collection of band aids, smiley faces and neon-colored, when they bled.

Bill swallows. His throat hurts. _I’d abandoned both, but only forgot one._

Georgie has never been here. He’s been here as he could, but he’d been miserable about it, living half of life, while Eddie’d always been just right around the corner…

The bedroom comes back into focus. Bowers’ knife flips in the air. Beside him, Georgie looks tiny and cozy, so small, so tiny, with so much to offer, with so much _life_ to live. If he dies for good, will he get that? Will another Bill waiting for his little brother get to live a life of happiness with him? Will Georgie get to grow old? Get all that he deserves? _Oh, I hope. I hope. I hope._

Bill doesn’t realize his hand has moved until he feels a sharp pain in his palm. He catches the knife blade point down, slicing right through his blood oath scar. The speed and weight of it should have his hand mangled, but he is only cut superficially. He closes his fingers around it, spreading the burn. The ache.

He says, “I’m sorry.”

He says, “Georgie, I love you,” and his eyes are wet.

He says, turning to the clown, “But I won’t give you Eddie.”

Pennywise roars, cracking his face in two to accommodate the growing incisors, all eight hundred million of them—Bill’s already gotten a front row seat to this—but the knife held securely in Bill’s sweaty fist is not meant for Pennywise.

It goes through Georgie’s eye instead.

Georgie gasps. No, Georgie _sighs,_ face slackening, mouth relaxing. Blood does not seep from his wound; a dark bluish mist swirls and shudders and breaks around them. Georgie looks at Bill with his good eye, makes purposeful eye contact, and there is nothing but love for him in that gaze. Nothing but pride.

He begins to fade, the mist changing between soft pinks and warm yellows, and the last thing Georgie ever says to Bill in this lifetime, words garbled, is, “I love you so much, Billy.”

Bill cries out, pain lashing through his body like wildfire, unable to comprehend the disappearance of his brother. For a moment he is there, and then the next he is gone, and Bill cannot get his mouth to work to return the sentiment. To tell him how much he cares, how much he’ll miss him, how important he’s always been.

Pennywise’s eye rolls around and around and around, pupil and white, pupil and white. Bill has to look away to keep from vomiting. He stares at his hamster, blissfully unaware, as a keening escapes Pennywise’s mouth, as the clown disappears with a _pop,_ leaving Bill alone in the bedroom he’s long stopped growing up in with a knife he used to kill his brother.

No—

He’s all alone in the dark, the room shimmering back to the cold, wet tunnel beneath the house on Neibolt. The knife is gone, the bedroom no longer exists, and that particular hamster is buried beneath his mother’s rosebushes. It is as it always is: Bill, by himself, in a cold, empty space, surviving but hardly living.

Bill drops hard to his knees, but the pain does not match the emotional turmoil surging through his bloodstream. Physical ailments are nothing to a broken, lonely heart—

_“STAN! STAN, NO, PLEASE!”_

—but 29 Neibolt Street is no place for mourners. Not right now.

Bill gets up and follows the sound of Richie’s screaming.

3

Eddie only gets twisted around three times trying to follow the sound of Stan’s slowing heart _(how can he hear it?)_ and Richie’s hysterical cries. His father, before fading away forever—the turtle probably along with him—had given him directions to the cistern, to the final battlefield, but It must’ve heard him and turned everything around.

Down one tunnel, Eddie gets his finger pricked on a spindle, kind of like that _Sleeping Beauty_ fairytale, but only worse: The needle is infected and it isn’t clear what disease he’ll get from it. He banishes that away as quickly as he can before the fear sets in and runs in the opposite direction. There, he faces another leper, this one with Richie’s characteristics and huge, bulky glasses, who tries to corner him into giving him a kiss. Eddie has no issue biting down hard on the arm that holds his neck and sprints.

He sprints, and sprints, and sprints—

—but he’s too late. Is he too late? He’s winded, panting and sweaty, his legs seemingly still in motion, and his first sight is not Bill, with caked gunk on his skin, his clothes sticking to him, or Ben and Mike, covered in dirt, or even Bev, her whole body redder than he’s ever seen it.

It’s Richie, and not because it’s always Richie.

It’s Richie, because he’s holding Stan in his lap, skin splotchy and eyes swollen, trying to convince Stan to talk.

Eddie strains to feel him, the same way he can feel Richie _(full),_ Georgie _(gone),_ and It _(hiding)._ The same way he can sense the other Losers, terrified and shaken, but willing to fight, one hundred percent over this bullshit.

Stan’s life force is weak, but it’s there. It’s persistent.

 _Stan,_ he prods.

 _Eddie,_ Stan replies, quiet. Subdued. He sounds like he’s in pain. _I know what to do. I know how to get rid of it. The same way…_

 _Don’t tell me,_ Eddie says, _tell everyone else._

He doesn’t waste time.

Skidding right into Richie’s side, Eddie replaces Richie’s hands, bloodstained and shaking, with his own, and thinks as hard and as desperately as he can. Strings of magic, golden and shiny, burst from his fingertips and slither beneath Stan’s nails, but the die out almost instantly, like a flame being snuffed. He tries again, urging the healing into his friend, but it feels too damp around him, too constricting.

He hums.

He sings, using words he doesn’t even know. A whole song he’s heard once before, almost like a lullaby. His voice echoes. Richie sniffles behind him. Phrases come and go, repeated over and over, growing more insistent, but not as insistent as _heal what has been hurt—_

_Heal what has been hurt—_

_Heal what has been hurt—_

And then, only then, with the knowledge his father bestowed upon him with his words and his turtle, does the rest of the song make sense. It is forever attached to the Kissing Bridge, the source of all the good magic, the power racing through his veins.

Eddie’s jaw hurts from what has turned into crazed chanting, he has a headache from his furrowed brow, and sweat drips slowly from his temple. But slowly, ever so slowly, Stan’s wrist wounds begin to close, muscle growing, tendons forming, new skin pulling. It’s more of a process than Ben’s stomach was, but Eddie feels the life return to Stan, hears the gasp as he can breathe, as he can function.

Richie mumbles, “Stan? Are you—?”

Stan’s laugh is small. “Can’t get rid of me that easily, Rich.”

“I didn’t _mean_ to,” Richie whines, throwing himself at Stan. “I swear I didn’t. I didn’t mean for any of this. For It, or for Georgie, or for… for you—”

“Be careful,” Stan hisses. “Don’t move me too much or else Eddie can’t—”

 _“—EDDIE!”_ Bev shrieks, a resounding echo.

It’s the only sound in the cistern, just the horrified shout, and then the squelching, cracking sound of torn flesh and broken bones as something sharp bursts through Eddie’s chest. He has just enough time to push Stan out of the way, to keep him from getting lanced through the heart, and then he’s thrown, shaken from the pincer attached to It’s multitude of spider legs.

He lands with a crash, breaking more bones, probably his ribs, rolling into a wall. Rock digs into his cheek. When he opens his eyes, the room spins. He takes a breath even as his body screams not to and tries not to jostle himself further when the pain becomes excruciating, his chest having been burst open, just like in all of his dreams.

 _ **Welcome home,**_ he hears. _**Welcome back.**_

There is no witty comeback this time. There’s only his confusing thoughts and the ache and sting of his wound. The strain of it all, of his lungs unable to get the oxygen they desire, of his brain running a mile a minute. His mouth feels dry. His legs feel numb.

_**Don’t bother with the magic. It no longer works.** _

_I know,_ he thinks back. _I was made for destruction._

It’s response is giddy. _**Made for my destruction, little Eddie Kaspbrak. My greatest gift.**_

Eddie passes out, he thinks.

Or maybe he dies.

He’s seated at the bottom of the quarry again, watching a turtle swim lazily above him. It’s comfortable here. Warm. He can feel his whole body. Maturin turns his head, looks down, and asks, in that all-encompassing way of his, _WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?_

“Dead, I think,” Eddie replies. “Or dying.”

 _NO,_ Maturin says. _CHANGING, MORE LIKE._

Eddie looks down to find his skin molting off him like he is nothing more than a snake. He tilts his head to the side, curious, and begins ripping it off, piece by piece.

4

_Eddie._

_Eddie?_

_EDDIE—_

5

Richie’s whole life comes to a stunning, stumbling halt. It ends. It breaks. Fractures. Where there was hope (misplaced maybe), there is nothing but fear, crippling him, holding him tight in its grasp. In his arms, he holds his best friend, bleeding from his wrists, and several feel away, Eddie lays, not moving, not even twitching, a dark spot growing on the back of his shirt.

Richie doesn’t know where to begin. Where to end up.

Around him, It shrieks, cackles, laughs. The spider legs Its procured wave around, breaking rock from the wall and sending vibrations through the foundation. All of Derry must hear it. Must feel it. One pincer sticks where Bev is standing, trapping her, keeping her from running to Eddie. Ben tries to break free of Mike, but Mike keeps him in one spot, muttering in his ear. Bill takes one of the fallen rocks and throws it right at the large clown head; it bounces back, like hitting rubber, but it does—and Richie would know this if he paid attention to anything but Stan and Eddie—crack the head, just a bit at the scalp.

Light fills the room, bright and gold, for the briefest of seconds before it fades, before the head heals itself.

Stan coughs, grabs Richie by the shirt, says, “He’s still alive.”

“How do you—“

“—the same way you do,” Stan interrupts. “Give me this.”

Richie sniffs. “You hate this shirt.”

“Yeah, it’s really one of the worst,” Stan agrees. “I won’t feel any remorse ripping it up. C’mon, don’t worry about me.”

“Don’t _worry—”_ Richie blurts. He still pulls his shirt off, peppered in tiny sharks. There’s a chance he bought this in the children’s section, pulling the biggest size he could find. “Stan, you’re my best friend, I’m not going to stop worrying about—”

“—then rip this up and wrap it around my wrists, dickwad,” Stan snaps. “Eddie did the best he could. If we stanch the bleeding now, I may have a fighting chance…”

Richie fumbles, trying to tear his shirt into suitable threads. His hands shake, making it hard, making it impossible. He brings the fabric to his mouth and _pulls._ The sound all but echoes through the cistern, louder than It’s shrieks and the mess It’s making. Louder than Bev, who shouts Eddie’s name, who shouts in general, bracketed in by more than one spider leg, keeping her away from the others.

“Make it _small!”_ Mike yells. Richie has no idea what that means, what it could entail, and struggles to tie the pieces of his shirt around Stan’s wrists. “It’s just a clown! It’s nothing more than—”

“A little tighter,” Stan hisses. “You’re not… yeah, like that. Quick. Do the other one. While It’s distracted.”

That all too familiar Pennywise laughter fills the air, closes them in. _“Just a clown?”_ It repeats, cackling. “You think your petty insults can _hurt_ me? You think I am capable of _feeling?_ So you are stronger than I first anticipated, older than I ever imagined, but I am still all powerful. Still all knowing. Still the Eater of Worlds. _The Eater of Children.”_

“Just a fucking _clown!”_ Bill yells, throwing another rock. This time, when it makes contact, the shattering of It’s skull resounds.

Stan’s face is pale before Richie, but there is a slow, slow seeping of color into his cheeks. His eyes brighten just a tad. He looks at Richie like a man with a future, like a man with a plan, and says, “I need Bev.”

“She’s stuck over there,” Richie replies miserably. His gaze flickers between the three of them: between Stan, Eddie, and Bev. “How am I supposed to—?”

“I’m weak,” Stan says. “I need you to call her for me. I can latch on from there.”

Richie has no idea what that means, has probably never had any idea what anything’s meant these past two days, but he does what he’s asked. Voice cracking like he’s never once experienced puberty, he yells her name, yells it like he’s never yelled anything before in his life. The sound of her voice echoes in his ears, breaks the ear drums, destroys his hearing, and rattles the very space they’re in.

It’s pincers drop from the wall. More rock tumbles. One of the many curved pieces containing It cracks and breaks, falling to the ground. It shrieks, but it cannot be louder than Richie was.

Bev darts away from her prison, showing up by Richie and Stan in the blink of an eye. “Stan, are you—”

Stan pushes Richie away from him. “Go,” he orders. “Bev, I’ve got an idea…”

Maybe if Richie were thinking more clearly, maybe if his heart wasn’t still breaking, maybe if he was unable to pick up the pieces in his hands, a pile on the floor, he’d be embarrassed by the easy way he gets up, leaving Stan to Bev’s care when Stan has never abandoned him, even when he asked.

_(Stan will never blame him. Stan asked him to.)_

Bev replaces him easily, cradling Stan’s head in her lap. They smile at each other, ruefully, like two people in on a secret. Normally Richie would pitch a fit—he _hates_ being left out—but there’s no time to stick to his concrete personality traits. There’s only Eddie, motionless across the cistern, and too many feet to cover to get to him.

He feels it when the clown focuses in on him, when the clown somehow weaves into his mind and plucks his thoughts one by one, pulling them out through his ear. It laughs, shaking the floor again, and cries gleefully, “Richie thinks he can get to Eddie! Richie thinks he can _save_ him! Richie, Eddie is _gone,_ he’ll _always_ be gone, too far from you, too—”

Another rock hits him between the eyes. The massive head careens back, slamming hard against the rough wall behind it.

“Richie, _go!”_ Ben shouts, arms laden with stones of varying sizes. Mike grabs one, winds up, and throws. This one makes It’s ear bleed.

It’s dumb of him, but Richie hesitates. “You’re just gonna, like, throw rocks at it?”

“It wuh-worked for us before!” Bill insists. _“Hey!”_ His voice rises. _“I’m behind you, shithead!”_

 _“Go!”_ Stan snaps. “Bev, kick him.”

“Ow!”

“We only have a—I think I can—” Stan’s voice wavers, breaks. “There isn’t much time, Richie. Get to Eddie and do _not_ listen to a single thing that fucker says.”

Richie blinks, electing not to focus on _there isn’t much time,_ because, uhhhhh, no fucking _thanks,_ Stan, and feels like he’s stuck in gym class playing dodgeball as he moves to Eddie’s side. He ducks jabbing legs and overshot rocks, literally tumbles to avoid a sharp pincer, and undoubtedly scrapes his palms, his knees, his cheeks—every part of him—when he makes it to Eddie.

To Eddie, who is paler than Stan. White as a sheet.

To Eddie, who looks to be—

_No, don’t think it._

Richie places a thumb to the pulse point at Eddie’s wrist, then his neck. He tries to calm his own racing heart, able to feel it in his fingers, searching wildly for a sign that Eddie is still there, that he hasn’t lost him, that this isn’t the end.

He panics at the absence, squeezes a little tighter, and mumbles, _“Please,_ Eds.”

_(he does not see the shining power beneath his hand, does not feel the strength of his own heartbeat weakening to provide Eddie with a modicum of life)_

Eddie’s lashes flutter. His chest rises. The pulse Richie was searching for returns, slow and steady, a ghost of what it should be, but _there._

“Eddie?” he asks tentatively. A groan or a croak is all he gets in reply. “Eddie, tell me what to do. Tell me how to help. Where do I need to put your hands for the magic to—”

Eddie shakes his head, opening his eyes first into slits and then all the way. He gropes weakly for Richie’s hand, sliding his fingers between his; they’re freezing, shaking. Richie squeezes, hoping to bring warmth to them. “Nowhere,” he mumbles. The whites of his eyes shine, glisten. They’re red, blood vessels popped. “The magic’s gone, Rich.”

_The magic’s—_

“No,” Richie says. “It can’t be. That’s the—it’s m— _I_ wished, it’s _mine_ to use—”

“It was never anybody’s,” replies Eddie. “It only used us to get what it wants. It wasn’t even mine. I just knew how to control it.”

“So tell it to come back!” Richie insists. “Tell it you’re not done! It is still here, how can the magic just _leave?”_

_How can it use you like this and leave you for dead? How can it manipulate me like this?_

But it manipulated Bill, too. And all those other people who Wished, even the ones who did it the first time. The magic takes your deepest desires and twists them, gives you what you want at a price, and no one has ever managed to figure out the negotiations for that part.

_(but for you, Richie Tozier, for you…)_

Eddie coughs. Blood stains his lower lip, his chin. “I _can’t,”_ he says. “It’s not there. I can’t feel it. All that I had…” He coughs again. “I gave to Stan. It was always meant to be this way.”

“I didn’t wish for this,” Richie replies petulantly.

“You wished for us to go back to how we were,” Eddie says sadly, “and how we were always ends like this, no matter what. I’m just… I’m glad I got to tell you this time around. I don’t—I never did, the other times.”

Richie can’t see him properly, tears clinging to his lashes, blood seeping into the lenses of his glasses. “Tell me what?” he asks, voice breaking. But he knows—he knows well enough.

“That I love you,” Eddie says, “that I’m _in_ love with you. Would’ve spent my whole life being in love with you if I’d been given the chance.” Richie’s breath hitches and his heart hammers; the words are new, though the feeling is not. Eddie just hadn’t said them out loud back in his house. “I used to dream you’d save me, you know. I just didn’t know I was dreaming about you.”

“A bullshit savior I am,” Richie grumbles. “Can’t even get the Prince Charming thing down right.”

“Are you saying I’m a damsel in distress?”

Richie sniffs. “No, I’m saying you’d look better in a dress than me.” He curls in close around Eddie, tucking himself around his battered body. He jostles him, making him hiss, but Eddie says nothing. He isn’t even that warm anymore. “You didn’t have to give Stan all the magic.”

Eddie reaches up with a wince to play with Richie’s hair, curling at his ears. “Yes, I did,” he replies. “You’d be miserable without him.”

“I’ll be miserable without _you.”_

“But you won’t have to be miserable without both of us,” Eddie murmurs. “You’ve learned to live without me.”

“Yeah.” Richie scoffs. “Poorly.”

“But you’ve done it,” Eddie says. “Do it again.”

“I don’t wanna,” Richie whines.

“I don’t wanna either, not after I got a taste of what could’ve been,” Eddie says. “Maybe my mom was right. Maybe it is too scary out here.”

Richie rolls his eyes. “It’s just too scary in Derry. Your mom is literally never right.”

Eddie hums in response, soft, slow, and weak, but he is still breathing. Still breathing. “You’re right,” he says. “You’re always right, but, Rich, you can’t stay with me.”

“Why not?”

“You have to help our friends,” Eddie reminds him gently, and the sounds of their massive fight filter back into Richie’s ears. He’d been actively ignoring them, getting lost in Eddie’s dark eyes. “You have to tear away It’s layers. You’re the only one It still has power over. Go make it small. Remind It that without your belief It’s nothing.”

Richie cries. It’s an ugly sort of thing, snot dripping down his chin. He wipes at it with the back of his hand. “I dreamed about you too,” he says. “All the time. I dreamed we got to leave Derry. I dreamed I got to love you.”

“You do,” Eddie replies, “and there are a million lives out there for us to meet in again. Lives we’ll get to live the way we deserve. _Go,_ please. Make sure our friends get to have those lives too.”

“And if I say fuck our friends?”

“I’d say you’re a liar.”

Richie sniffles. “Yeah, you’re right. I am a liar.” He untangles himself from Eddie as gently as he can, and places a palm to his face, turning his head just enough to press his mouth to Eddie’s bloodstained lips. A golden tear falls from Richie’s eye, splashing on Eddie’s cheek, seeping into it, setting his skin aglow.

This, however, cannot be seen beneath the blood and grime.

Neither can the patching up of Eddie’s wound, going from fatal, to critical, to manageable.

“I love you,” he tells him, brushing a thumb along his lower lip. “I will love you if I never see you again—”

“—and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday,” Eddie finishes, mouth quirking into that half-smile Richie likes so much.

“How did you—my letter—” Richie’s brow furrows. “Stan.”

Eddie nods. “I loved you back then too,” he says. “You made mixtapes. I brought you extra fruit from home. Our love languages were very different.” He swallows. “I’m gonna close my eyes now.”

“When you open them again, the clown’ll be gone,” Richie promises, and it will be, but will Eddie be gone along with it?

“I know,” Eddie says, voice soft. “I believe in you.”

Richie stares at him until he physically cannot and pushes himself to his feet. He feels like he’s in a daze, letting go of Eddie as gently as he can, trying to make him more comfortable on a cold, hard floor. His nose is clogged, and so are his ears. His head aches and his eyes sting, pounding pain in every part of him, matching the fervor of his breaking heart. He knows what he has to do, knows _how_ to do it—tear it apart bit by bit, find where it hurts the most and crush it—but when he turns away from what matters and faces what doesn’t, he freezes.

While his world came to a crashing halt before him, the rest of it continued.

The others are covered in gunk, in blood, in scrapes and bruises. Bev’s had to curl herself around Stan, pull him away to talk to him; Ben and Mike teamed up with Bill, physically hurting the clown, though it doesn’t matter much to It in the end.

Not when those beady eyes set their sights on Richie, lighting up in that malevolent way of theirs. He cannot even begin to imagine what he looks like; the defeat swilling in his belly is tugged up his throat, pulled from him like a fraying thread to use against him. It gobbles it up like some kind of—like a junkie eager for its next fix. It’s mouth opens, teeth sharp and phlegmy saliva dripping from an outstretched smile, slobbering all over its ugly mug. “Fear,” It breathes. “Glorious, glorious fear… I knew I could rely on you, Trashmouth, always so eager to please…”

“Richie, it’s lying—”

“—don’t be afraid of it! Rip it apart!”

_(he’s already afraid, he’s always been—)_

But Richie’s mouth is dry, the words he could say stacking on top of each other, rendering him speechless. “Fear two,” he blurts instead, staring into those yellow eyes, those dead eyes, like they hold all the answers in the world.

“You’ve brought me everything I’ve ever wanted,” Pennywise continues, slithering close. It’s got a few broken legs, shattering by fallen curves of rock. “You’ve spent your whole life being so afraid, so deliciously scared… the tastes of your fear have kept me sated these past years… I cannot imagine how full I will feel when I finally get to have you.”

“Richie—“

 _Finally_ have him? It’s never _not_ had him, knowing his fears before he did, taunting him with things he’d hidden so deeply he’d been unaware of them, trying to get rid of Stan and Eddie before Richie knew what that meant for him.

He’s been in It’s clutches since the moment he carved those initials into that bridge.

 _“Rich!”_ That’s Stan’s voice—weak and throaty but alive. That thought tickles at the back of his mind, but he cannot be pulled away from the allure of It. _“Whatever you do, do not look into—“_

—the lights are so bright. So _tantalizing._

Richie’s body seizes. His neck snaps, back rigid. He’s duly aware of his feet leaving the ground, legs dangling heavily. The lenses in his glasses shatter; he feels the shards scrape his cheeks, the skin around his eyes. But none of it matters, nothing but what he sees ahead of him.

His eyes burn, stinging with the intensity, but he follows blindly, time broken into pieces, some hard to follow, others so painstakingly precise and detailed it feels like he’s there in them.

He watches Eddie hug him in a sun-dappled meadow, arm in a cast, before leaving for what, deep down, Richie knows is forever. He looks after him until he’s long gone, not even a dot in the distance. He offers up a weak _See ya_ to Bill and Bev and Ben, kicking at the ground as he leaves, mind whirling.

He watches himself crouch down at the bridge, carving initials into it. Sees himself stuff the pocket knife in his coat and slouch against the wood, head in his heads, heart in his throat.

He watches himself cry, ugly, snotty sobs that make his face so blotchy and red and dry, as Eddie sits on the edge of his bed and tells him his mom is moving them closer to her sisters. He pleads with him to stay, to convince her otherwise, to—and he doesn’t say this out loud— _be with me, don’t leave me,_ but all Eddie can say is _She’s my mom. I’m fifteen. I can’t change her mind._

He watches himself almost flunk out of school, miserable, with only Mike and Ben as company. Stan, Bev, and Bill had all left, too, Bev the first and Eddie the last.

He watches himself call Eddie in New York or Long Island or wherever he is now, hands shaking as he dials the numbers. Sonia picks up the first time, sending a wave of hot terror down his spine. He hangs up. Waits ten minutes. Redials.

This time, Eddie answers, a monotone _Kaspbrak residence,_ and, overjoyed, Richie yelps. _Eds!_ he says. _Hi! Sorry I waited so long to call, how are you—_

 _Sorry,_ Eddie says, confused, _do I know you?_

_It’s… it’s me, Eds. Richie. Has New York changed you so much you don’t remember your best friend?_

_I don’t…_ Eddie pauses. _I think you may have the wrong number, man. Eds isn’t even my name._

He hangs up awkwardly, heart gripped in one of those medieval torture devices, and throws up in the trash bin by the phone.

He watches an older version of him ending up at the same college as Eddie, completely unaware as they walk past each other on campus. Richie’s head turns to stare after him, interested in the tiny boy, quick on his feet, and looks away before he can catch the lingering glance Eddie throws back at him. This Eddie trips over himself into a bush.

They’re older still, Eddie with some woman in the back of a dark bar, nursing a drink and looking miserable. Richie can’t gauge how old they’re supposed to be, but he knows the look in Eddie’s eyes as he watches Richie, on stage, spewing bullshit probably, laughing at his jokes and utterly enthralled. The woman he’s with makes them leave early, unamused, even as Eddie says, _But, Myra, I think I know him._

 _You could never know such a dirty, disgusting man,_ this Myra says, and Eddie… Eddie believes her.

He watches instance after instance where he and Eddie almost make it, just missing each other. Crossing paths at the wrong times, saying things that don’t matter because they thought they had time… but they don’t have time. They never have time, do they?

 _ **It always ends like this,**_ that voice echoes in his head, scratchy and familiar. _**No matter how hard you try to thwart me, to stop me, it always ends like this. So close… so close and yet so—**_

6

Eddie comes to, skin burning, head pounding, tongue as dry as the desert. His chest aches like he’d been stabbed right through it and—

_Wait._

His arms feel like fifty pound weights when he lifts them, wrists weak like his hands are boulders, but he frantically presses them to his body. His shirt, sodden beneath his touch, squelches, but the skin under the rips and tears is perfect. Unblemished. His heart pounds overtime, stealing the breath from his lungs, tightening, but other than that…

He tries to slide a hand up his back to check the entrance wound, but he can’t reach. He’s still sore, still feels like he’s been—you know, thrown across a cistern by a murderous space clown—but he’s… He’s intact. In one piece. He’s…

There’s something different about him, something more concrete. Something just _him._ He’s not pulsing with energy, not drawn to the evil at the core of this very house. He just is. He’s—he’s _Eddie,_ like he knew he always would be.

The ringing in his ears dulls to a faint buzzing, bringing the horrified shrieking of his friends to the forefront of his mind. Ben’s shouts are mean and specific, so different from the niceties and careful consideration of his words. Mike and Bill’s voices mix together, overlapping with the intensity of the things they’re flinging at It, hovering large in the middle of the room. Bev is a shrill sound that grates the ears, a shriek of obscenities, of taunts, but what Eddie focuses on, what spurs Eddie’s body up, at least into a seated position, is—

It’s—

_“Let go of him!”_

And it’s Stan crawling on his literal hands and knees to Eddie’s side, breathing a sigh of relief when he sees Eddie blinking, his chest rising and falling unbidden. He presses his forehead to Eddie’s, slick with sweat and blood and other unmentionables, gripping him tight. “You in there?”

Eddie’s breath escapes him in a rush. “Yeah,” he says. “I don’t know…” He presses his hands to his chest again. “I don’t know how, but _yeah.”_

“I have a theory,” Stan says, “about the magic, but we don’t have time for that. Or a whiteboard. I have a plan, though, a very detailed, multi-step plan that requires you save Richie.”

“Save…” But he’d known something was wrong the moment he woke up. He’d _felt_ it. It’s like that was the reason he’d woken. “Where is he? What’s wrong with him?”

“He let it get to him,” Stan says. “He’s caught in the Deadlights.”

“The _Deadlights?!”_ Eddie repeats, terror gripping his heart. “How did he—“

“You getting… injured,” Stan begins tentatively, “kind of… He took one look at It and didn’t even try to fight It like the rest of us did. I can’t imagine what he’s seeing, but, Eddie, whatever it is, it’ll stay with him forever and we need to get him out. I can’t do anything if he’s stuck in them.”

Eddie pushes himself up, ribs groaning and back straining. “And what can I—did you _see_ what—what do I do? Stan, tell me what you need from me.”

“The iron spike,” Stan says quietly, almost a whisper. Eddie squints at his lips, forming the words. “I need you to throw it into his mouth. It’ll give us the time we need.”

“We lost our weapons,” Eddie reminds him. “We have… what? Our hands? I don’t think I can use mine without getting eaten.”

Stan shakes his head. “The spike… It appears when we need it. It’s integral to our story, so whenever it is required it—“ He points past Eddie, his wrists tied tight with scraps of Richie’s patterned shirt. “There. Do you see?”

Eddie can’t see shit, honestly, but above them, on a tiny ledge jutted from the wall, something shimmers into existence, something long and sharp, a piece of the broken gate outside.

He looks at it as it materializes, hit with a memory—no, not a memory, but a flash of a future—and he knows exactly what he has to do. What he needs to avoid.

“You see?” Stan asks. His hand is wrapped around Eddie’s, squeezing tight, leaving imprints of his nails in his skin. “What I need? What _cannot_ happen?”

“That was you, showing me that?”

Stan nods. “It’s getting harder to… My grip on whatever the Deadlights…” He trails off, letting go of Eddie’s hand. “That’s why we need to work fast. I worry I won’t know what to do once the magic fades.”

“Right,” Eddie agrees, stumbling to his feet. “Mine’s already gone.”

“No, there’s something still there,” Stan says. “I feel it coursing through you.”

“Whatever it is, I can’t access it,” Eddie replies. “Did those visions of yours show you any footholds here or am I supposed to know how to mountain climb?”

“It’s a rock wall, not the side of a cliff,” Stan retorts, “and it’s only, like, ten feet up.”

Eddie shoots him a look. “I’m not exactly in peak physical shape,” he says.

He runs his fingers along the wall, searching for grooves big enough to slot his toes in, things to grip as he climbs. His body is shot already—apparently magic healing only closes a wound, doesn’t stop the actual wound itself from being _felt,_ which is fucking shitty—so he really wants to make this as easy as he possibly can.

But then Bev yells again, and Stan says, “No, not yet!” and the worst, most guttural sound comes from the prone form of Richie, hanging above them all. He sounds as zombies do in horror movies, hungry and mindless; whatever he’s seeing… Eddie doesn’t want to know, but it can’t be good.

Eddie gives up the search. His body will heal if he gets any other _normal_ injuries. With a sharp inhale and gritted teeth, he scrambles to the ledge, fast and quick like a spider monkey. He breaks several of his nails in the process. Not to be dramatic, especially since he’d just had a gaping hole through his back _and_ chest, but _this,_ cracked nails all the way to the skin of his finger—this is the worst pain he’s ever felt.

The spike is there when he gets to the top. He grips it tight, afraid he’s going to lose it or it’ll disappear if he doesn’t, and turns on his heel. Up here he’s got a perfect view of the battle, if you could call it that, and the carnage that followed.

Richie hovers, hangs, useless, so close to him. His mouth is slack and his eyes rolled back, but there is a look of intense concentration on the skin he can see, beneath the thin sheen of sweat and tears—because he’s crying. He’s in these lights and he’s _crying._

Eddie’s never felt an anger so visceral before. He’s never wanted so much to kill something with his bare hands.

He looks around wildly at the others, spotting them in corners, ducking around flailing limbs, which It has now decided to change. Pincers. Tentacles. Painful smoke, beginning to wrap around Mike’s ankles. It’s lazy and careless, not targeted at all, with It’s main focus on Richie and the bits of him Richie is allowing him to see.

Eddie closes his eyes. He spins. The room spins? His head hurts. He ignores that, finding his center, and shuffles forward, angling his body so he won’t hit Richie when the time comes.

It sucks Stan can’t do this, being on the baseball team.

It’s up to Eddie, but it’s always been up to Eddie. _You were born for destruction._ And Eddie would never let anyone save Richie if he could do it himself. Not when he was twelve, not in some future where they end up here again, and especially not now.

Whatever power this clown holds over Richie, it’s done now. He can’t have him. Eddie won’t let him.

Richie is _his._

Eddie has no experience throwing spears—this is not a spear—but he takes a bit of a running jump and sends the spike flying through the air, straight into It’s bright open mouth.

One light goes out instantly, the spike landing on it like a dartboard. Richie’s body shudders, lowering, and It is shot back, the other two lights blinking haphazardly like a broken streetlight. The large clown head breaks the wall behind it, sending a crack up to the ceiling, dropping more and more rock on them. One of the tunnels closes in on itself, limiting their exits.

It whines, loud and sharp like a balloon losing air, and Richie falls straight down.

Eddie shouts nonsensically, a mix of names, a terrified repertoire of injuries flipping through his brain, shit he knows can happen to a body from a drop like that. He leaps off the ledge, not caring about the strain on his ankles and knees, and rushes to where Richie’s body lies. It hit the ground with the worst snapping sound.

7

_**How does it feel? To know he loves you in every timeline? To know that’s been taken from you time and time again? How does it feel to be so powerless against me, to be uselessssssssss—** _

The final ‘s’ sound is drawn out into a pained, angry hiss, and each and every world Richie’s ever gotten the chance to live in disappears. He sees darkness first, then the slow reveal of the cistern, and just— _pain._

He’s never experienced pain like this before.

His back feels as if it’s snapped, and his shoulders sting with the impact. His pelvis is gone, probably, along with his knees, every part of him fucking shattered. He can’t move his toes. Doesn’t want to try. He focuses on breathing first, ribs cracked, broken, fractured, and worries about the whistling he hears. The way his chest hurts with each inhale.

A shadow falls over him, probably another mean trick because Richie is useless, like It said, because Richie is still so unfathomably scared, but he doesn’t know _why._ What’s left to hurt him? It’s all already happened. It’s already _here._

Stan, bleeding and broken.

Eddie, taken from him—from them _all—shut up you’re selfish you only care about yourself right now—_ just after he’d returned.

Richie doesn’t bother opening his eyes, doesn’t think he _can,_ but it doesn’t matter. Let the wolf tear him to shreds. Let the clown feast on his insides, on his belly, round with fear, and his heart, bursting with misery. He is a snack, he is a meal, everything It has ever wanted, primed just for It’s consumption.

He should’ve known all of this was to get to him. It wasn’t Eddie he should’ve been worried about—it was _never_ Eddie, who stands up and fights back no matter how scared—it’s himself. This whole thing… the wish, the bullies, Mrs K, getting time with Eddie… it’d been to ensure _Richie_ was at the right place at the right time, a pig over a flame, apple secured between his teeth.

And if he hadn’t slept, if Stan hadn’t drugged him… who knows how far he’d have made it down here? Who knows if he’d even—

“You think even louder than I do,” a voice says. _Eddie_ says.

But that can’t be right. Eddie is far away. Eddie is hunched in on himself, part of the game It is playing with Richie, taking his people and murdering them before him. Eddie is—he’s—

At least Stan has a fighting chance. At least Stan has Mike, Bev, Ben, and Bill. At least Stan didn’t hold a four year long grudge with his best friend over something that wasn’t his fault. At least—

Hands hover over his body, close enough to feel heat but not to feel their touch. Richie imagines their trembling, imagines the knees close to his side, pressing tight against him. He can’t be sure where he is, who he’s with, and so he will not be making any sudden moves.

Still, when the palms finally touch the specific aches of his shoulders, his pelvis, his knees, soothing them, he blurts, “Eds?”

“C’mon,” Eddie mutters, and that’s his voice, alright. The second time he’s heard it. He’s dead, too, then. Both of them. At least they’re together in the afterlife. That’s a nice thought. “Stan said it’s here somewhere, come on, come on, _come on.”_

Richie lifts his hand to find Eddie’s, but can’t do that. His body _hurts._ It… he can’t feel it. He must be a spirit or something with the phantom pains of his earthly death. That makes sense. He wonders if Eddie feels that gaping hole in his chest.

“Come— _please.”_ Spirit-Eddie’s voice is wet, which is ridiculous, they’re both dead and they’re both here. It’s not ideal but it’s _fine._ Not like Richie had much going for him. He could’ve accidentally gone to college and gotten a degree in some science thing, graduated with a 4.0 and _done_ something interesting with his life. Imagine that shitshow.

But Eddie is still begging, still crying, and Richie feels his tears on his face like a nice sprinkling of rain.

He opens his mouth to reassure him of—something, he guesses, or he tries to, but his mouth feels like it’s been stitched closed. Eddie hiccoughs, hands all over him again, and snaps, “Come _on,_ you don’t get to do this to me. _You_ don’t get to leave. I fucking— _yes. Yes yes yes!”_

Richie feels like he’s been punched in the gut, but the tightening in his chest goes away. The numbness in his calves fades. His feet? He’s got ‘em.

And then the relief is gone, just as Eddie’s hands are. He’s riddled with pain, gasping for air, dizzy with nausea and confusion, and Stan is—

— _wait, Stan?—_

—Stan is yelling, “Eddie, _move!”_

Warm, heavy weight crashes on top of him, making Richie whimper, and Eddie apologizes profusely over and over _(sorry sorry sorry oh my god I’m so sorry)_ and tugs them away, all but rolling Richie over, chest to floor, hitting his nose too hard on the ground, and then back to his previous position.

His head feels even worse now. Little bursts of color appear behind his closed eyes, stars, almost.

“Oh shit.” Eddie’s fingers press to the skin above Richie’s upper lip. He can smell the coppery blood that’s settled there. He’s not really surprised. “I’m—“

“—if you say sorry one more time, I’ll have to hit you,” Richie croaks.

“Oh,” Eddie says. Oh. _Oh._ “You’re there. Hi.”

“Yes. Here.” Words are a lot. His throat is sore, like he spent time screaming. “But of course I am. M’dead.”

_“EDDIE!”_

Eddie huddles close, swooping down, feeling like he’s covering Richie’s body with his own. Air whooshes above them, quick, hot, and putrid, a slice of something sharp too close for comfort. Eddie curses into Richie’s neck, panting, and for a brief, hallucinatory second, Richie feels the pounding of his heart.

Of _Eddie’s_ heart.

His own, Richie’s, thumps along to match it.

So the afterlife is this? Fighting It over and over, dying but not allowed to leave? Constantly at odds with evil?

Richie coughs. That hurts, too. “I know I was a pretty shitty person and my jokes weren’t funny,” he says, hoarse and slow and ignorant of the way his throat slices up with each word, “but did I really get sent to _hell? Really?_ Was this backwards town right? Do gays go straight to hell even if they were, like, kind of normal? Had _some_ morals? What kind of—“

Stan’s ordering bark interrupts his mindless tirade: “Bev, _now!_ Make it count!”

“—Richie, you’re not—“

“I don’t know if I can, Stan!” Bev yells back. “I don’t know if I—“ She breaks off, screaming, the kind of shout that echoes, that stays with you, mainly because it’s bouncing around your brain.

“You _can!”_ Stan shouts. “I _saw! BELIEVE!”_

There’s a monstrous shriek, different from Bev’s, and a build up of anger in the form of Ben’s voice: _“YOU’RE NOTHING BUT A CLOWN! A JOKE! A MUMMY! A MOTHERFUCKING—“_

A roar, angry, deliciously pleased with Ben’s attempts to stand up to it.

 _“A BULLY!”_ Mike yells.

A rock, or multiple, tumbling to the floor, crashing into each other, slapping against skin.

“I’m not even good at those shooter games at the arcade!” Bev insists shrilly. “Where’s the slingshot, Stan? _She had a slingshot!”_

“You don’t need one!” Stan yells, as sincere as he can be between the fury and fear. “You’re Beverly Marsh, you can do anything!”

Richie struggles to find Eddie’s sleeve, tugging. “Tell her… tell her she’s good at the games,” he whispers, voice so low Eddie needs to press his ear to his mouth. “I just fucked with her and put her on the hardest setting every time. She’s—she’s still got the highest score in Galaga. Tell her. Tell her.”

He presses his lips to Eddie’s ear, a facsimile of a kiss, spreading his blood along the lobe, and Eddie shivers, digging his fingers into the material of Richie’s shirt at his waist.

He lifts his head, shouts, “Richie says he’s been fucking with you this whole time, you’re actually really—“

—and that’s the last thing Richie hears before the darkness pulling at his navel hooks its claws in him and swallows him whole.

8

Richie is four, maybe five. His hand is tightly clasped within his sister’s as their parents take them around the pet store. She’s apparently old enough for a fish, or a hamster, or whatever she wants. She did good in school. She is responsible. Richie thinks that’s dumb. That’s his new favorite word. Dumb.

But he follows anyway, enthralled with all the animals he can play with, or bother, and when his sister expresses interest in something furry with a long tail, Richie wanders away to the tank in the middle of the room.

It is full of turtles.

He presses his hands and his nose against the glass, watching, as they swim and laze and are relatively boring.

He taps at them, at one in particular, sitting on a rock, looking like a statue. It moves its head at the sound, to look at Richie, and Richie wants to cry all of a sudden, feeling… feeling… something.

He won’t know until years later that he’s feeling _seen_ for the first time. It’s so scary to be broken open like that, but if it’s the right person… Well, Richie will find that out in a few years.

 _HI, RICHIE,_ the turtle says.

“Hi,” Richie replies back, jittery.

_DO YOU WANT TO MEET SOMEONE SPECIAL?_

“I’m not allowed to talk to strangers.”

The turtle looks like it is smiling, eyes twinkling. Can turtles do that? He does a report on them next year, in kindergarten. They can’t.

_THIS PERSON IS NOT A STRANGER._

“Do I know them?”

_NOT YET._

“Mom would say that is a stranger and I shouldn’t talk to them.”

_THEY ARE A STRANGER FOR NOW BUT THEY WILL MEAN A LOT TO YOU SOON. THE WORLD, MAYBE. YOU WILL LOVE THEM._

“Like how I love Mommy?”

_DIFFERENT. MORE, PERHAPS._

What is _more_ than loving his mom? How could he love someone more than her? How does a turtle know who or what is important to Richie? Richie just wants his sister to get her new pet so they can get donuts on the way home and he can watch cartoons in his pajamas.

“Okay,” he replies. “Who is it?”

It’s not like he has any friends yet, except for maybe Stan, from preschool. He’s funny and likes to get paint _everywhere._

The turtle turns his head in the other direction and Richie follows the movement. A pair of big brown eyes blink back at him from the other side of the tank, warped in the glass. Richie meets them and something weird happens. Something scary.

His heart starts beating really fast, like when his sister lets him eat too much sugar, and his hands get sweaty, leaving streaks on the tank’s glass. He drops them, wiping them on his shirt. He wants to look away but he can’t, mesmerized by this face, those eyes. Something in him feels like it’s been clicked into place.

 _Cute,_ he thinks, which is a first. He wants to pinch his cheeks. He wants to—his dad sometimes kisses his mom on the cheek. Richie wants to do that. _Cute cute cute!_

“Oh,” he says. He hopes he only speaks to the turtle. “Who is that?”

 _EDDIE,_ the turtle replies.

“Eddie,” Richie repeats. The name is immediately carved into his heart.

The turtle tilts his head, does that smiling thing again, and stretches a leg, dropping down low. The way the sun hits its shell makes it look teal. Purple. Yellow. Colorful, like it’s been painted, but not by Richie and Stan. They make everything that gross brown color, not that brown is a gross color because Eddie’s eyes are brown and they are so pretty.

Eddie, across from him, says, “Y’not supposed to tap the glass. S’mean.”

“Oh,” Richie says back, flustered. “I… I’m sorry.” He doesn’t know if he says it to the turtles or Eddie.

Eddie smiles, teeth tiny and white, kind of crooked. Richie’s heart goes into overdrive. He thinks he’s going to die. People die from having bad hearts. His grandpa had something called a heart attack and was in the hospital for a while. “S’okay!” Eddie exclaims, then turns around to grab his dad. “That one, Daddy. Look at the shell!”

Richie swallows, backing up slowly when he hears his mom call for him. Eddie waves from the other side of the tank. Richie jerkily returns it. The turtle meets his eyes again, looking right through him.

_IT’S TIME TO WAKE UP._

9

Richie wakes up quickly and violently, gasping for air and kicking a leg out from beneath an itchy blanket. The room he’s in is blurry, his glasses who the fuck knows where, but it’s white, clinical, and smells overwhelmingly of antiseptic. His arms feel heavy, one pricked with an IV, and the other wrapped around Eddie, curled as small as he can be into his side. He’s a warm, comforting presence, like he always is.

Squinting, Richie looks around to find the others all around him. Ben and Bev are sharing a chair, nestled cozily together, legs intertwined. Mike and Bill have claim of a cot that cannot hold both of them, but they manage to make it work, all but spooning. The only one missing is Stan, and Richie hears his heart rate pick up on the monitor he’s connected to, dread filling his limbs like lead.

Eddie shifts uncomfortably where Richie holds him tight, lack of Stan sending him into a frenzy, and Richie lets go.

The door in front of them opens, half a body sliding into the room, tall and lanky and with a head of dark curls. One hand holds a styrofoam cup, tendrils of heat swirling from the surface, and the mouth snaps, “We’re not leaving until he wakes up. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you this, _Dolores._ Yes, you can call my mom!”

Richie’s heart monitor beeps, beeps, beeps, as he counts heads now.

One,

two,

three,

four,

five,

six,

and, Richie, seven.

All of them are here. All the Losers, all in one piece—or as whole as they can be, given the circumstances.

Richie is aware of the wetness on his face, clinging to his lashes. Eddie is, too, apparently, tuned into Richie’s emotions; even asleep, he cuddles closer, nose to his collarbone.

“Oh,” Stan says, “you’re up, and you’re… crying.”

If it weren’t Stan, and if Stan weren’t Richie’s best friend, it’d seem rude, but it _is_ Stan and Stan _is_ Richie’s best friend so it just makes him cry harder.

“And you’re an asshole,” Richie whines. His eyes zero in on Stan’s wrists, bandaged up with white tape and gauze. “What’d Dolores ever do to you?”

“Told me visiting hours were over and I had to go home,” Stan replies stiffly. “Obviously I did not. I camped out outside your door where I purposely tripped her. She’s been calling my mom for days.”

“And Andrea doesn’t care that you’re abusing the healthcare staff?” Richie asks, and then, “Wait, _days?”_

Stan’s mouth quirks. “Andrea told them to fuck off and let me stay with my best friend and then sent you a large bouquet of roses.” He points to the table on Richie’s left. “You’ve been here for two days, waking up on and off. Your mom is distraught and we’ve all been grounded for playing in the abandoned house on Neibolt.”

“ _Grounded?”_ Richie repeats. _“Playing?_ Am I _ten?”_

“Bill told _his_ mom that we went there to drink because Bill is an _idiot,_ so naturally his parents told my parents who told your parents who told Ben’s mom who tried to tell Bev’s aunt, who didn’t care, and Mike’s grandpa literally just laughed, and then everyone saw Eddie again and it was like… like nothing mattered, not why we were at the hospital or what we did to get there. Mags took one look at him and was all, _Oh, Eddie, I can’t believe we let her do that to you._ It was a journey. Apparently we don’t have terrible parents, we just lived in a town where the magic made them emotionally unavailable.”

Richie’s mind reels at this onslaught of news, confused by his mother’s interest—but his mother was always interested, his friends said, and she paid attention when she drank wine, when her inhibitions were lowered and the magic had to fight with alcohol—and he’s shocked by the clamminess of Stan’s fingers, pressed to his forehead. He leans into it, glad this action still exists. Is still here.

“Not that I didn’t think you’d pull through,” Stan murmurs, _“but.”_

Richie looks up, surprised to see the brightness in Stan’s eyes, swimming with emotion. “But it’s not the same until you see it?” he offers up, circling a hand carefully around Stan’s wrist. He feels his pulse. Alive, alive, alive. “What even happened? I don’t remember shit.”

Stan smooths out a spot on the side of the bed Eddie is not occupying and lets Richie intertwine their fingers. “I combined realities,” he says. “Remember how I told you I could see time?”

“Yeah, that was batshit,” Richie says, “but I get what you mean.”

A squeeze of Richie’s hand. “It didn’t know how to handle more than one coming at it at the same time.”

“Does not compute,” Richie says in a robotic voice, though it does compute, sort of, and he does not want to rifle through the lifetimes he saw where he and Eddie were not, were _never_ anything but an old memory. Childhood friends.

“We’ve fought It in almost all of our lives. We’ve always been together as kids, maybe not after, but we are never born into worlds where the rest of us are not. It knew that. It knew that it made a terrible mistake catching me in the Deadlights because my mind works differently than others. It’s more analytical. I’ll find an answer where there isn’t. And that is why It picked on me, tried to make me choose a reality—“

“—is that what happened when we separated?”

Stan nods with a rough swallow. “I was given three doors. Behind each one was a reality I could choose. I didn’t like any of them so I almost let Bev and I die before realizing I could just make my own.”

“Your own—reality?” Richie asks.

“Yep,” says Stan, “and I thought if It wanted me to pick just _one,_ I’d make It have to live all three It forced me to choose from.”

“I understand in theory, sort of,” Richie replies, “but I still don’t get it.”

It’s like the part of his brain that _would,_ that comprehends the mystical and the magical and the fantastical is gone. On vacation. Out for the day.

Eddie stirs next to him, half-asleep. His voice is slow when he talks, soothing, honey-like. Richie’s blood races. He and Stan both ignore how his heart monitor beeps incessantly. “Bev used her silver earrings to break It apart, like I _said_ would work but no one wanted to listen to me and my kid’s book. It’s how we fought It when we were eleven in the fifties. I saved you from the Deadlights like I do in the future that no longer exists and because Stan was there, we avoided my very unfortunate death—“

“—still got the same wound, though—“

“—yeah, well, thank God the good magic likes Richie,” Eddie babbles. He shifts, nosing at Richie’s pulse point. “We confused It. Combining silver with insults and believing in each other, in having _all_ of us together—It just shriveled up and died. Bill went right up to this dying baby thing, it was so ugly, and told it off so badly that the thing just… It _exploded._ There’s nothing scary about a crying clown baby, let me tell you, but it was pretty gross when we all ended up covered in brains and guts. That thing had, like, seven hearts.”

Richie glances at Stan, curious. Stan shrugs. “Basically. Sounds like it took less time than it did.”

“Eds has a habit of fast-talking,” Richie says fondly. He wriggles about so he can rake his fingers through Eddie’s hair. “It’s dead for real this time? We’re certain?”

Eddie hums and even though the question was for Stan, he answers, “The house collapsed like It’s life was the only thing holding it up. It was hard getting out, like _so_ hard, like whatever magic was left was trying to bury us along with it, and we had to literally _drag_ you out, like—“ Pause. Deliberate. Alarmed. Excited. “Richie?”

“In the flesh.”

“You’re up?”

“It would appear so.”

“Oh my _GOD!”_ Eddie shoots up, jostling the bed, but not hurting Richie, and wraps himself around the both of them, Stan’s hand still in Richie’s. “Oh my god,” he says again. “Oh my— _Rich.”_ He’s holding and clinging and holding and clinging, wetness traveling down the length of Richie’s throat.

The other Losers wake with the commotion, and then it’s a mess of loud voices, excited shouting, and a lot, _a lot,_ of crying. Too much crying for some practically grown teens, but they don’t care. They all try to fit themselves onto Richie’s bed, too big and too long and too much, but like puzzle pieces destined to fit together, they make it work, and it’s the most full Richie has felt in years. Even though he hurts all over and Bev’s foot has jabbed him in the back, where he’s particularly sore, he’s content to hurt if it’s by them, if the hands doing the hurting are just trying to love him, to hold him, to love each other, as they always have.

There’s Eddie on one side and Stan, pretzel-legged, on the other. Bev and Bill fight over the space by his feet. Mike forces himself next to Stan, one foot on the floor, a knee on the bed, and Ben lifts Eddie, sliding into his spot and placing him down on his lap. Every part of Richie’s body is touched by someone who loves him, by someone who would die for him and someone he would do the same. He thought by now he’d be out of tears but they come down in waves, feeling like he’s drowning in his own emotions.

“Out, out, _OUT!”_ A nurse shouts, entering the room. “Mister Uris, what did I say—“

“—I’ll call my mom this time,” Stan snaps. “She’ll want to know he’s up.”

Bev laughs and Eddie giggles and eventually Mike, always the voice of reason, ushers them out.

“Sorry for the inconveniences, ma’am,” he says. His sarcasm does not go unnoticed, but he’s got a nice face and genuine disposition, so it goes right over her head.

She smiles up at him, a tiny thing in comparison, and asks, “How did you all manage to fit in here anyway?”

Mike turns to wink at Richie and replies, “Magic,” which sets Ben and Bev off again.

With kisses to his cheek and mussings of his hair and promises of chocolate, one by one they leave his room until it’s just Richie, Eddie, Bill, and Stan.

Bill drops a hand to Stan’s shoulder and tries to shove him out, Stan’s mouth running a mile a minute when the doctor comes in, asking question after question, medical terms being used like he’s some sort of expert. Dolores looks harried and the doctor amused, baffled by the amount of information this seventeen year old kid seems to have.

“Sorry!” Bill yelps, dragging Stan away. “He wants to be a doctor!”

The door slams closed on them as Stan replies, “What the fuck? No, I don’t.”

Eddie remains next to Richie, not having moved a muscle. His arms are still wrapped around him, his heartbeat comforting against Richie’s side.

The nurse is much nicer to Eddie than she was to Stan. “You have to go too, dear,” she says, voice soft.

“No, I don’t.”

“The doctor needs to see him,” she says, the doctor bustling around with his tools and whatever else he needs. “We typically don’t allow anyone in the room while the patient is being observed.”

“Too bad,” Eddie retorts. “I’m staying. I’ll move over, though.”

_“Honey—“_

“No.”

“You really need to give him privacy—“

“—privacy _schmivacy,”_ Eddie says. “I love him. I’m not going anywhere. I mean, I am, but just over here.”

If Richie continues to cry, it’s because the IV stings as it’s removed, or because his ribs are still bruised, or because he fractured his tailbone falling very hard from a very short distance in a house that no longer exists, but you can decide the reason, if you wish.

Richie knows the truth.

He looks over at Eddie, watching the doctor poke and prod at him, his brow furrowed and lower lip held between his teeth.

He knows well enough.

10

The world after It goes a little something like this:

Eddie returns to Derry, magic-less, with some bullshit excuse for his four year disappearance. He has newfound confidence, smiles more, laughs more, and doesn’t shy away from hugs or kisses. The adults of Derry seem more awake, more aware, and all the old bullies are reprimanded and punished as they should be. Victor Criss goes to jail. Greta Bowie gets her car taken away and has to issue a public apology to everyone she’s ever been mean to.

The kids that went missing are never found, but in the debris of Neibolt, the bodies are—bodies from now, from years past, cold cases and new cases—and their families are allowed closure for the first time, sometimes, in _decades._

The Losers have another funeral for Georgie in the little meadow in the Barrens, and like they would have, once upon a time in a world where both Stan and Eddie die, the six of them huddle around a sobbing Bill, who says goodbye for the final time to his little brother. Above them, clouds shift and move; one, in the shape of a turtle, whispers, _I knew you could do it._

Maggie and Went see right through Eddie’s excuses— _my mom got a job, we went to her sisters’, she wanted to be in New York—_ and do not ask where she is when she never shows up. Bev says they must think he’s run off and good for him, obviously, but they all know the truth, once he tells them.

In December 1994, Eddie moves into the spare bedroom at the Toziers. There are strict rules in place for the two boys to stay in their own rooms and that there is to be _no_ funny business, though Maggie winks when these rules are set. Eddie agrees wholeheartedly, but finds himself in Richie’s bed every night regardless. If Richie’s parents stumble upon them like that at all, they never say a single word.

(Went goes out of his way to learn about same-sex relationships. He brings home a number of pamphlets, leaving them on placemats and dinner plates and in cabinets and dresser drawers and between textbook pages, happy to talk and happy to help if either of his boys have any questions. Dick jokes, as it turns out, run in the Tozier family.)

The Losers wait the extra time it takes Eddie to finish high school, Sonia having fucked up his education so thoroughly that he needs to redo eleventh grade all over again. They won’t leave Maine until they can _all_ leave Maine, and two years after Eddie returns to Derry, on a warm June afternoon, the Losers Club pile into various cars, headed towards something, something _good,_ something _great,_ with no intention of looking back.

There’s no more magic in Derry. The Neibolt house is gone, the ground ripped up and cleansed to make room for a community garden. No one has seen a turtle, any turtle, since that same day the house went down, and the old carvings on the Kissing Bridge fade with time, nothing left to keep them relevant.

 _All_ the carvings but one— _R+E_ remains, sharp and golden like it’d been carved yesterday, and that’s where it’ll stay, long after the town forgets who Richie Tozier and Eddie Kaspbrak are.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm gonna take a lil break to plan out some thiiiings, but be on the look out for a halloween reddie and an additional fic in the [listen to my heart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20958827) universe since the year anniversary is coming up!!

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to talk to me at my really boring/half-used [Tumblr](https://vampirerising.tumblr.com/) if you're feelin' frisky ;)


End file.
